Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
randal k wrote: This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot Raking up an older thread, but I have to comment on this. I understand it is hard to find the right person for the job. And even harder to find someone who has a wide range of knowledge and deep specialised knowledge to boot. When I was even more naive I always thought that in the world of IT most people knew a lot about many things, because it's not just a job but their hobby and passion (it is for me). So a sysadmin knows how to code and a coder knows how to set up a network and server etc. Yet what I noticed is that it is very rare to find such people. In fact I found people in one niche being almost ignorant of other fields. Say a coder gets confused when /tmp fills up and being unaware of this thing called a search engine and instead will virtually cry help my puter b0rked, I stuck! and vice versa. It looks to me it's just the nature of most people to be good at only one or a couple of things and be mostly ignorant about the rest. It's not going to change much, and we just have to accept that's how it is for the most part. However it can be mitigated to some extent: emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. This indeed will help a lot and is very important. Sadly though in the USA this kind of thing is not found to be important at all. Besides that, it is actually quite hard to find the right job. Or, actually, to be even acknowledged or heard by the employer of such a job. As always this thing goes both ways. Employers in the USA need to invest more in training their employees and learning should be an important and constant part of one's job and be actively encouraged. I think in this they're quite behind their Western European counterparts. Regards, Jeroen -- Earthquake Magnitude: 3.2 Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 17:24:31 UTC Location: Southern Alaska Latitude: 59.8964; Longitude: -153.3298 Depth: 135.00 km
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Say a coder gets confused when /tmp fills up and being unaware of this thing called a search engine and instead will virtually cry help my puter b0rked, I stuck! and vice versa. Hah! In my experience, this phenomenon is not unique to coders, sysadmins, or any other specialization. People prefer to look to other people for their answers. This one has bugged me for a long time, as I'm not sure what to attribute it to - is it a desire to be social, or to have the answer personalized? Is it a compliment indicative of respect of ones peer, or is it an indication of laziness? Employers in the USA need to invest more in training their employees and learning should be an important and constant part of one's job and be actively encouraged. I think in this they're quite behind their Western European counterparts. This is likely true in many larger corporations. I have found the startup and SMB sectors to be highly amenable to investing in their people. Cash-strapped businesses are most likely to consider the ROI of buying their employees skillsets (ie, training) vs hiring in new employees just to acquire those skillsets, whereas larger companies either already have a guy who knows how to do X, or doesn't really mind hiring an X specialist (or the all-too-common X consultant). Nathan
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Nathan Eisenberg wrote:
To: Jeroen van Aart jer...@mompl.net, NANOG list nanog@nanog.org
Subject: RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 22:25:40 +
Say a
coder gets confused when /tmp fills up and being unaware of this thing
called a search engine and instead will virtually cry help my puter
b0rked, I stuck! and vice versa.
Hah! In my experience, this phenomenon is not unique to coders,
sysadmins, or any other specialization. People prefer to look to other
people for their answers. This one has bugged me for a long time, as
I'm not sure what to attribute it to - is it a desire to be social, or
to have the answer personalized? Is it a compliment indicative of
respect of ones peer, or is it an indication of laziness?
This phenomona has been recognized for, well, forever. The 'reasons'
are codified in 'traditional wisdom' like two heads are better than one,
or the modern The solution to the most intractable problem is immediately
obvious to the first unqualified observer.
When ones own way of lookinng at a problem isn't working, it is necessary
to find a different way of looking at the problem. The most efficient
way to do that is talk to some who thinks differently than you do.
Search engines are good for finding facts; 'less good' for finding
abstract/concept info -- It's much harder to formulate a search
query to find something to 'fill in the blanks' in an _incomplete_
conceptualization. If yu can foumulate the search for what you're
missing the search probably contains the answers you're looking for.
Also, the act of 'organizing ones thoughts' to explain the problem to
someone who is *NOT* familiar with the background of the problem can
lead to _self-recognition_ of the solution. I have phoned a collegue,
many times, and/or had a collegue phone me, where the _one-sided_
conversation has gone;
-- Hello?
-- Hi! I've got a problem. like _this_ {launches into description}...
OH!! never mind, the light just dawned!
-- chuckle Glad I could help.
Troubleshooting, however, _is_ a special case situation. I can
pontificate on this at some length. You have been warned. grin
Troubleshooting problems is an 'art', not a 'science'.
Either you know how to do it, or you don't. And, like any other art,
you can't teach it; you _can_ teach 'mechanics' that help people who
have an 'instinctive' (for lack of a better word) grasp of the subject
do it better. But the _ability_ has to be there in the first place.
It's similaar to integral calculus -- you have a result, and are looking
for the question. (Remember how _hard_ integration was -- until the 'AHA!'
moment when, all of a sudden, it all made sense. And you were shaking
your head wondering *why* you had so much trouble 'getting it'.)
Troubleshooting is much the same. If you've seen that problem before,
you have an idea of what -may- be causing it. And can start checking
for the existing of each possible 'what' that you know about. With
experience, you know _which_ what is most likely and to start there.
Also, what _additional_ things to check, to narrow down the list of
'possibles'.
'Search engines' are good when you have a 'question' and are looking for
looking for an 'answer' (like 'differential calculus', to use the math
metaphor). But they're medium lousy, at best, at finding the 'question'
that fits the 'answer'.
There are some major attempts being made to build computers that _can_
reverse engineer the 'question' from an 'answer'. See 'Watson' -- the
IBM research computer project that plays as a contestant on Jeopardy!
The latest incarnation 'does good' a lot of the time, but when it's wrong
it is *very* wrong. I don't think I've ever seen it be 'close, but
incorrect'.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
- Original Message - From: Thorsten Dahm t.d...@resolution.de The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. Yes, I know, they can call you, or send an Email, but nothing beats the good old Let's go for a coffee, I'd like to ask you a question. Private IRC server. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
--- bon...@mail.r-bonomi.com wrote: --- Scott Weeks sur...@mauigateway.com wrote: bmann...@vacation.karoshi.com wrote: actually, i've heard the real reason is corporate liability ... that said, there is an advantage for team f2f mtgs on a periodic basis. I don't follow. Could you elaborate? What is the liability? I don't know for certain, but I expect work at home' employeees fall under the scope of the employers Workmans Compenstation liability covrerage, with regard to injuries sustained on the job. Now, consider what happens if the employee sustains an 'on the job' injury, due to something in the 'workplace' (done by the homeowner on his own time) that is _NOT_ OHSA-compliant. - Well, if that's a big issue for companies and managers it seems like something easy to write up in the contract for work. Even other things they worry about could be written to protect them and I think we'd still sign up if we didn't have to up root our lives to do work we enjoy. That is unless the gov't forces companies to treat the home as a workplace when telecommuting. I still have the sneaking suspicion that many managers don't feel they have enough control when one telecommutes as well as the other things discussed in this thread. scott 'A large quantity of organic waste/byproducts forcefully impacted the high-speed rotary impeller. I'm going to steal that one... :-)
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Scott Weeks sur...@mauigateway.com wrote: --- bickn...@ufp.org wrote: From: Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org If you have telecommuters _everyone_ in the office should be forced to work from home at least 2 weeks a year, including the manager. It's only from that experience you learn to deal with your telecommuting co-workers in a way that raises everyone's productivity. - I have been bemoaning the lack of telecommuting positions available since I last did that permanently from 1998-2002. I could never figure out how to get the managers since then to understand how to manage remote workers effectively, as that's what I think the problem is. The manager's ability to value an employee in this century's methodology, rather than the old way: wow, he was in the office 10 hours today. He must've gotten a lot of work done. When, actually, the person played around for 6 of those hours while looking busy. Having the manager work from home, even temporarily, would solve this. Now if I can just get them to actually do that... :-) Easy. Have the managers manage people halfway around the planet. Only a tiny minority of my team works in the same timezone I do; if I made my team members fit to my office-day work schedule, they'd quickly mutiny. Working from home lets me interact with them at more reasonable hours for them, without causing too much undue impact to my life schedule. It also helps when you're managing people 12,000 miles away; there's almost zero chance of face to face time in the office, so you quickly learn to use IRC, IM, and remote access voice conference bridges to do realtime or near-realtime interaction when needed, and email for longer-term threads. I really hope manager-types are listening. You limit yourselves to those available in your immediate area and the skills they have. Opening yourselves to telecommuting allows you to hire folks with skills that may match your needs more effectively. Some of us are; unfortunately, we're not the ones with open headcount for hiring, because nobody on our teams ever wants to leave. ;-P Personally, I am working at smaller networks than I would like to, but I get to live on Kauai and surf places like this every day: www.imagemania.net/data/media/22/Polihale%20Beach,%20Kauai,%20Hawaii.jpg when I'd rather get back into BGP and operating large networks because I enjoy it. However, I will not give up life's fun things just to do that for a living. I know I'm not the only one out there who thinks this way. Totally agree; I've been courted by companies that are eager to hire me, but once the subject of telecommuting is broached, they suddenly backpedal; to me, that's a clear sign there's an impedance mismatch, at which point I usually politely end the conversation. scott Matt
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:40:54 EST, Jay Ashworth said: Private IRC server. Amen to that. I've decided that our private Jabber server has resulted in an order of magnitude improvement in dealing with quick question for ya requests, as you can cut/paste to/from as needed (it's still kinda hard to cut-n-paste what the co-worker said over coffee or over the phone ;) with less overhead than e-mail (especially for things that take 3-4 RTTs to resolve). pgpRXTOFlFegI.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 10:47:22AM -0800, Scott Weeks wrote: In our industry, especially with all the tools we have today, it would seem that telecommuting would be more accepted, but it's not and I don't understand why. People are social primates, alphas like access to nonverbal cues for reading and control of their supposed underlings. Same reasons for concentrations in big cities: interaction density is higher for business dinners while underlings are not too far away. Net ops are more like hunter-gatherers than anything, so there's considerable culture clash.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Am 12/1/11 9:35 PM, schrieb David Radcliffe: Since I like to work and code (I spend 10 hours a day on the computer at the office, think about work related stuff in the shower, and often write Perl code at home to deal with various household tasks) I work quite well at home. There are more distractions at the office and my productivity is greater in my home computer room during those times I have to put in some extra for the office. The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. Yes, I know, they can call you, or send an Email, but nothing beats the good old Let's go for a coffee, I'd like to ask you a question. cheers, Thorsten
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 12:25:41PM +, Thorsten Dahm wrote: Yes, I know, they can call you, or send an Email, but nothing beats the good old Let's go for a coffee, I'd like to ask you a question. Some people just put up a dedicated netbook with a permanent video/audio link (can be a problem with limited residential upstram) for a poor man's telepresence. What could potentially work even better is to build a virtual office using e.g. OpenQwaq http://code.google.com/p/openqwaq/ (not sure the codes are fully done in the open sourced version yet, but they'll be there in a few months).
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
-Original Message- From: Thorsten Dahm [mailto:t.d...@resolution.de] Sent: 02 December 2011 12:28 To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Am 12/1/11 9:35 PM, schrieb David Radcliffe: Since I like to work and code (I spend 10 hours a day on the computer at the office, think about work related stuff in the shower, and often write Perl code at home to deal with various household tasks) I work quite well at home. There are more distractions at the office and my productivity is greater in my home computer room during those times I have to put in some extra for the office. The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. And it means you do not get 'noticed' as much. I work from home when I have a task to get done that benefits from not having to talk to people. A specific document that needs completing or some more PowerPoint waffle for a pointless meeting with people who won't get it anyway. Other than that, I try to be in the office. -- Leigh __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Am 12/1/11 9:35 PM, schrieb David Radcliffe: Since I like to work and code (I spend 10 hours a day on the computer at the office, think about work related stuff in the shower, and often write Perl code at home to deal with various household tasks) I work quite well at home. There are more distractions at the office and my productivity is greater in my home computer room during those times I have to put in some extra for the office. The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. Yes, I know, they can call you, or send an Email, but nothing beats the good old Let's go for a coffee, I'd like to ask you a question. Which really stops being practical once you exceed (approx) one building in size. It was interesting during the early days to note that there were certain people who did a lot of their interaction on IRC, even when in the office, even when sitting a few cubes away from each other sometimes. It definitely enabled telepresence - obviously not as good as being there, but it was funny every now and then when you'd go looking for that person and find out they were out today at a different office, or telecommuting. It seems to me that we've not been as successful as we might at this whole telecommuting thing, because people - especially at small companies - ARE used to being able to grab a coffee, and there's a reluctance to lose that. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Friday, December 02, 2011 07:25:41 AM Thorsten Dahm wrote: Am 12/1/11 9:35 PM, schrieb David Radcliffe: Since I like to work and code (I spend 10 hours a day on the computer at the office, think about work related stuff in the shower, and often write Perl code at home to deal with various household tasks) I work quite well at home. There are more distractions at the office and my productivity is greater in my home computer room during those times I have to put in some extra for the office. The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. Yes, I know, they can call you, or send an Email, but nothing beats the good old Let's go for a coffee, I'd like to ask you a question. cheers, Thorsten Actually, that is the upside. Everywhere I have worked there are the people who will come to you before they even try to think of an answer. Your work gets interrupted because they did not have to send an email and wanted an excuse to socialize. It's much better to have a record (email) of most conversations especially when there are technical points which may be helpful to refer to in the future. F2F is fine when you are working on pushing your point as it is easier to create presence but 99% of all meetings and impromptu discussions in the office waste more time than provide any real benefit. I know plenty of people (my wife included) who disagree and feel there is great benefit in F2F but I contended they are just more comfortable with the old fashioned way they have always done things. There are people even today who will print and bring me an email to discuss the reported problem rather than forward information electronically. That is just because it is difficult for people to break their comfort molds to see a more productive method. I do not say it is easy. I understand people think the way they do things, the things which make them comfortable, seem best but in this case F2F is not best for everyone. If someone says to me Let's go for a coffee, I'd like to ask you a question what I hear is Gee, you are not busy. Why are you getting a paycheck? Let's go talk shop and other non-work related stuff. I have a legitimate question and I want to socialize. I have a better idea, send email. If the question is too deep we can meet on the phone. I have a TeamSpeak server. Want to get together? Let's grab a beer after work or we can chat on TS while wandering through Left4Dead. F2F is for semi-work related activities. If you need to paint a picture we can bounce a diagram back and forth (please use open standards -- .odg, .dia, etc. -- and not proprietary -- .vsd) or we can draw simple stuff in Coccinella or OpenMeeting (I have servers set up). We can use email. We can use chat (I have Coccinella and a local server for our in-house and use Pidgin for AIM, Yahoo, MSN for my outside contacts). I have Logitech 9000 cameras so if you really, really want to see me I will configure my VoIP (Asterisk server at home) so we can look at each other. The whole I have to be in your space in an office for work to be effective is so nineteenth century. Seriously: You talked to Ted the other day about the NetFlow based bandwidth billing project. What were the details and decisions? Can you remember the important points? No. But the discussion was electronic so I will pass you the email chain/chat log/etc. My dream is roll out of bed, make coffee, walk upstairs into my computer room and begin work. Deal with conversations via email/work the online job queue. Maybe attend a quarterly face-time meeting with the company. Maybe the people are nice. That would be cool. Maybe a monthly meeting at the home office in Atlanta on the 3rd Friday because the company provides tickets to Jazz at the High Museum. I can dream... -- David Radcliffe Network Engineer/Linux Specialist da...@davidradcliffe.org www.davidradcliffe.org Nothing ever gets solved better with panic. If you do not know the answer, it is probably 42.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
In a message written on Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 12:25:41PM +, Thorsten Dahm wrote: The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. I've both delt with remote employees and been a telecommuter. After those experiences, and reading a few books I've decided the hardest thing about having successful telecommuters is dealing with the folks in the office. Telecommuters quickly turn to technology, they want to video-chat with collegues. Are eager to pick up the phone and talk. They reach out (generally). It's the folks in the office that are reluctant. They don't see the point of figuring out how the video chat software works, of setting their status to indicate what they are doing, and so on. The water cooler conversations can be moved to Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, or any number of other solutions, but it requires everyone to be in that mindset. If you have telecommuters _everyone_ in the office should be forced to work from home at least 2 weeks a year, including the manager. It's only from that experience you learn to deal with your telecommuting co-workers in a way that raises everyone's productivity. Once over that hump there are huge rewards to having telecommuters. You can pay lower salaries as people can live in cheaper locations. People in multiple timezones provide better natural coverage. People are much more willing to do off hour work when they can roll out of bed at 5AM and be working at 5:05 in their PJ's, rather than getting up at 4 and getting dressed to drive in and do the work. -- Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ pgpsMznpOpGxk.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Am 12/2/11 1:16 PM, schrieb Joe Greco: Thorsten Dahm: The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. Which really stops being practical once you exceed (approx) one building in size. I think it often depends on how you define practical. Normally, you sit with your own team, that means it is a practical solution for the network engineers, but perhaps not for the server admins and the network engineers anymore, since the server admins may sit in a different building, different city, different continent, cheers, Thorsten
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
--- da...@davidradcliffe.org wrote: From: David Radcliffe da...@davidradcliffe.org Actually, the best reason I have for working from home is I work much better when naked and they have asked me to stop showing up that way at the office. Woah, woah, woah! The absolute pain of that image is breaking my mind apart! ;-) scott
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
--- bickn...@ufp.org wrote: From: Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org If you have telecommuters _everyone_ in the office should be forced to work from home at least 2 weeks a year, including the manager. It's only from that experience you learn to deal with your telecommuting co-workers in a way that raises everyone's productivity. - I have been bemoaning the lack of telecommuting positions available since I last did that permanently from 1998-2002. I could never figure out how to get the managers since then to understand how to manage remote workers effectively, as that's what I think the problem is. The manager's ability to value an employee in this century's methodology, rather than the old way: wow, he was in the office 10 hours today. He must've gotten a lot of work done. When, actually, the person played around for 6 of those hours while looking busy. Having the manager work from home, even temporarily, would solve this. Now if I can just get them to actually do that... :-) --- Once over that hump there are huge rewards to having telecommuters. You can pay lower salaries as people can live in cheaper locations. --- The company gets to pay for less space, too. Have a hot cube where everyone uses it for the day(s) they need to work in the office. I really hope manager-types are listening. You limit yourselves to those available in your immediate area and the skills they have. Opening yourselves to telecommuting allows you to hire folks with skills that may match your needs more effectively. Personally, I am working at smaller networks than I would like to, but I get to live on Kauai and surf places like this every day: www.imagemania.net/data/media/22/Polihale%20Beach,%20Kauai,%20Hawaii.jpg when I'd rather get back into BGP and operating large networks because I enjoy it. However, I will not give up life's fun things just to do that for a living. I know I'm not the only one out there who thinks this way. scott --- bickn...@ufp.org wrote: From: Leo Bicknell bickn...@ufp.org To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 07:37:08 -0800 In a message written on Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 12:25:41PM +, Thorsten Dahm wrote: The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. I've both delt with remote employees and been a telecommuter. After those experiences, and reading a few books I've decided the hardest thing about having successful telecommuters is dealing with the folks in the office. Telecommuters quickly turn to technology, they want to video-chat with collegues. Are eager to pick up the phone and talk. They reach out (generally). It's the folks in the office that are reluctant. They don't see the point of figuring out how the video chat software works, of setting their status to indicate what they are doing, and so on. The water cooler conversations can be moved to Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, or any number of other solutions, but it requires everyone to be in that mindset. If you have telecommuters _everyone_ in the office should be forced to work from home at least 2 weeks a year, including the manager. It's only from that experience you learn to deal with your telecommuting co-workers in a way that raises everyone's productivity. Once over that hump there are huge rewards to having telecommuters. You can pay lower salaries as people can live in cheaper locations. People in multiple timezones provide better natural coverage. People are much more willing to do off hour work when they can roll out of bed at 5AM and be working at 5:05 in their PJ's, rather than getting up at 4 and getting dressed to drive in and do the work. -- Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Apologies for the rapid-shot email. It's Friday... :-) --- bmann...@vacation.karoshi.com wrote: From: bmann...@vacation.karoshi.com On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 04:35:27PM -0500, David Radcliffe wrote: The reason it is not more accepted is too many people still think If I cannot see you you must not be working. actually, i've heard the real reason is corporate liability ... that said, there is an advantage for team f2f mtgs on a periodic basis. -- I don't follow. Could you elaborate? What is the liability? scott
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Am 12/2/11 1:16 PM, schrieb Joe Greco: Thorsten Dahm: The downside of this is that you are not around in the office in case someone wants to talk to you. I often end up with guys from our operations team or other teams stopping at my desk and ask questions. Or guys who want to have a quick chat about a problem and want to ask for an advice or idea. Or people who want to learn Perl and have a question that you can answer in 30 seconds. Which really stops being practical once you exceed (approx) one building in size. I think it often depends on how you define practical. Normally, you sit with your own team, that means it is a practical solution for the network engineers, but perhaps not for the server admins and the network engineers anymore, since the server admins may sit in a different building, different city, different continent, While any absolute rule would be silly, of course, I would have thought my point was sufficiently clear. There comes a point at which all the people you may want to talk to are no longer sitting in the same building. That doesn't mean all buildings will successfully allow F2F meetings (Pentagon) or that having groups within the same building will encourage F2F meetings. It's a simple fact that once you *must* deal with someone in another building, the amount of time and effort involved gets much higher and more inconvenient. If you manage to find a way to keep your group small and all in the same building, then what I said doesn't apply, but that can itself become impractical as a company grows. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Scott Weeks sur...@mauigateway.com wrote: Apologies for the rapid-shot email. It's Friday... :-) bmann...@vacation.karoshi.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 04:35:27PM -0500, David Radcliffe wrote: The reason it is not more accepted is too many people still think If I cannot see you you must not be working. actually, i've heard the real reason is corporate liability ... that said, there is an advantage for team f2f mtgs on a periodic basis. I don't follow. Could you elaborate? What is the liability? I don't know for certain, but I expect work at home' employeees fall under the scope of the employers Workmans Compenstation liability covrerage, with regard to injuries sustained on the job. Now, consider what happens if the employee sustains an 'on the job' injury, due to something in the 'workplace' (done by the homeowner on his own time) that is _NOT_ OHSA-compliant. At that point, as it is sometimes put in U.S. Dept. of Ag. bureaucratese: 'A large quantity of organic waste/byproducts forcefully impacted the high-speed rotary impeller.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Fri, Dec 02, 2011 at 05:55:23PM -0600, Robert Bonomi wrote: Scott Weeks sur...@mauigateway.com wrote: Apologies for the rapid-shot email. It's Friday... :-) bmann...@vacation.karoshi.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 04:35:27PM -0500, David Radcliffe wrote: The reason it is not more accepted is too many people still think If I cannot see you you must not be working. actually, i've heard the real reason is corporate liability ... that said, there is an advantage for team f2f mtgs on a periodic basis. I don't follow. Could you elaborate? What is the liability? I don't know for certain, but I expect work at home' employeees fall under the scope of the employers Workmans Compenstation liability covrerage, with regard to injuries sustained on the job. There are those who say this has already happened http://www.news.com.au/business/telstra-forced-to-pay-costs-compensation-after-worker-dale-hargreaves-slips-while-working-at-home/story-e6frfm1i-1226081649913 Now, I'm sure the facts of the matter haven't gotten in the way of the story there, but I'm struggling to come up with a set of circumstances which *don't* involve an application of palm to face. - Matt -- You know you have a distributed system when the crash of a computer you’ve never heard of stops you from getting any work done. -- Leslie Lamport Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - attitude, team player, can write, can speak, can run a small project - and are more than just Cisco pimps. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to meet a newly minted CCNP who has zero Linux experience, can't script anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. Randal On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Bill Stewart nonobvi...@gmail.com wrote: And yeah, sometimes it means that you need to go learn technologies like Active Directory [snip] In addition to learning scripting languages
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
- Original Message - From: randal k na...@data102.com Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. A relatively serviceable argument can be made that that guy who knows every parameter of every command of every version of IOS ever shipped, and which bugs are in which ones... is like that cause he's an Aspie, and you're not gonna *get* the other stuff from him or her, no matter how hard you try. Luckily, by the time you get to the point where you *need* that person, your staff is usually large enough that you can absorb some savants. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
I am looking for just such a person now. Good Juniper, some Cisco and Sysadmin experience with an ISP background.. I expect it will be immensely difficult to find somebody. What makes it even more frustrating is that just such a person was not all that long ago made redundant! So if anybody is looking for something to do around London... -- Leigh -Original Message- From: randal k [mailto:na...@data102.com] Sent: 01 December 2011 15:19 To: Bill Stewart Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - attitude, team player, can write, can speak, can run a small project - and are more than just Cisco pimps. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to meet a newly minted CCNP who has zero Linux experience, can't script anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. Randal On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Bill Stewart nonobvi...@gmail.com wrote: And yeah, sometimes it means that you need to go learn technologies like Active Directory [snip] In addition to learning scripting languages __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
It takes me years to find such people and when I do, I try very hard to keep them! I have 3 key people that fit the soft attribute criteria Randal mentioned, but with a premium skill set in their specific function. Good luck with your task Leigh! Mark Stevens On 12/1/2011 10:21 AM, Leigh Porter wrote: I am looking for just such a person now. Good Juniper, some Cisco and Sysadmin experience with an ISP background.. I expect it will be immensely difficult to find somebody. What makes it even more frustrating is that just such a person was not all that long ago made redundant! So if anybody is looking for something to do around London... -- Leigh -Original Message- From: randal k [mailto:na...@data102.com] Sent: 01 December 2011 15:19 To: Bill Stewart Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - attitude, team player, can write, can speak, can run a small project - and are more than just Cisco pimps. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to meet a newly minted CCNP who has zero Linux experience, can't script anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. Randal On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Bill Stewartnonobvi...@gmail.com wrote: And yeah, sometimes it means that you need to go learn technologies like Active Directory [snip] In addition to learning scripting languages __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
In a message written on Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 08:17:08AM -0700, randal k wrote: This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - attitude, team player, can write, can speak, can run a small project - and are more than just Cisco pimps. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to meet a newly minted CCNP who has zero Linux experience, can't script anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... I've been on both sides of this coin, looking for folks with these sorts of skills and finding them very difficult to find but also looking for employers who valued this base of skills when I have been job hunting in the past. My observation is that most ISP's want this broad base of skills, but won't pay for it. The folks with these skills promptly move in one of a few directions. They become consultants making huge money but dealing with the clueless. They become SE's for vendors and VAR's, where their skills can earn them comissions. The few lucky ones become Architects or Principal Engineers and provide vision and run key projects, but then they aren't doing much day to day work. More interestingly, the people with these sorts of skills got them because they like touching everything and maintaining their end to end knowledge. While it's more a problem on the corporate side, a lot of folks want to hire this knowledge and then put them in a role where their hands are tied, unable to access all of these parts. Obstensibly the goal is to have them lead and mentor the clueless in control of the various elements, but the few folks I've seen try it quickly get frustrated, see no future in it, and leave. No where is this more true than when these sorts of folks are brought in to manage outsourced arrangements. It's a wonderful double edged sword. Someone who can think their way out of a myriad of technical problems is also smart enough to evaluate the orginizational structure and dynamics, predict their own future (or lack thereof), predict the success and failure rates of the current envornment and leave if they don't think it's a net positive. I do think NANOG as a community could do a better job in helping employers and potential employees in this industry find each other. I know nanog-jobs exists, but it doesn't seem to have traction with either side of the problem. -- Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ pgpvb8upBaGjY.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
-Original Message- From: Leo Bicknell [mailto:bickn...@ufp.org] Sent: 01 December 2011 16:15 To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. It's a wonderful double edged sword. Someone who can think their way out of a myriad of technical problems is also smart enough to evaluate the orginizational structure and dynamics, predict their own future (or lack thereof), predict the success and failure rates of the current envornment and leave if they don't think it's a net positive. An excellent analysis of the situation. -- Leigh __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Personally, I have worked in places where I have performed all of the skills below (router/switch/Unix/Linux/AD/firewall/proxy/web admin/sendmail admin, etc.), and also in places where just router/switch/architect layer 1-3 skills were the primary focus. I prefer the latter, and find this to be a personal choice as to what makes for a meaningful and fulfilling job. The fact that so few network engineers are to be found with all of these skills, I think, speaks for itself in that many network engineers have made the choice, and that choice is to be focused on layers 1-3, which, with DWDM through BGP, offers many challenging, different, and varied technology complexities the mastery of which makes work meaningful and rewarding. -Original Message- From: Mark Stevens [mailto:mana...@monmouth.com] Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 7:53 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. It takes me years to find such people and when I do, I try very hard to keep them! I have 3 key people that fit the soft attribute criteria Randal mentioned, but with a premium skill set in their specific function. Good luck with your task Leigh! Mark Stevens On 12/1/2011 10:21 AM, Leigh Porter wrote: I am looking for just such a person now. Good Juniper, some Cisco and Sysadmin experience with an ISP background.. I expect it will be immensely difficult to find somebody. What makes it even more frustrating is that just such a person was not all that long ago made redundant! So if anybody is looking for something to do around London... -- Leigh -Original Message- From: randal k [mailto:na...@data102.com] Sent: 01 December 2011 15:19 To: Bill Stewart Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - attitude, team player, can write, can speak, can run a small project - and are more than just Cisco pimps. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to meet a newly minted CCNP who has zero Linux experience, can't script anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. Randal On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Bill Stewartnonobvi...@gmail.com wrote: And yeah, sometimes it means that you need to go learn technologies like Active Directory [snip] In addition to learning scripting languages __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ This communication, together with any attachments or embedded links, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain information that is confidential or legally protected. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, disclosure, copying, dissemination, distribution or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail message and delete the original and all copies of the communication, along with any attachments or embedded links, from your system.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
I keep running into cases where people do not know how to adequately use my talents so the compensation is too light... Or they require relocation, even though the nature of the job is virtual (hands on not really required). At least it is nice to see some folks out there who do need people like me. Over the years I've been a (very good) coder, sysadmin, DBA, network engineer, etc. with strong Cisco and some Juniper (of course a couple days self training and I am pretty strong on anything). I'm not a job hopper so I have to either really hate my position or get an offer too good to refuse, for me to change companies. For me the too good includes things like telecommute (I am well set up for that), good salary/package (have that now..the salary part anyway), limited paperwork a plus (we pay you salary, you provide results...no pointy haired bosses here), a company who's motto is not Panic! Because planning is just too much effort. I guess my advice is: Don't miss out on someone who might be your star employee just to keep doing things the old way. Telecommuting can be very effective with the proper management tools. Obviously, working from home is not for everyone so the employee needs to be dedicated to the process. The best technical people can be quirky. I once had a guy on my team who customers thought was rude so I had to handle sites where people had met him before. I recognized he was desperately shy and did not deal with people well. He was a very talented technician so rather than loose him I was able to redeploy his abilities to projects not involving humans. Worked out well. For me it's lists. I do way better when I have lists I can check off. I make lists for everything and get a warm feeling when I check off an items. I like the word check because it brings up a picture in my head of a list with check marks. Freaky, huh? On Thursday, December 01, 2011 10:52:39 AM Mark Stevens wrote: It takes me years to find such people and when I do, I try very hard to keep them! I have 3 key people that fit the soft attribute criteria Randal mentioned, but with a premium skill set in their specific function. Good luck with your task Leigh! Mark Stevens On 12/1/2011 10:21 AM, Leigh Porter wrote: I am looking for just such a person now. Good Juniper, some Cisco and Sysadmin experience with an ISP background.. I expect it will be immensely difficult to find somebody. What makes it even more frustrating is that just such a person was not all that long ago made redundant! So if anybody is looking for something to do around London... -- Leigh -Original Message- From: randal k [mailto:na...@data102.com] Sent: 01 December 2011 15:19 To: Bill Stewart Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice. This is a huge point. We've had a LOT of trouble finding good network engineers who have all of the previously mentioned soft attributes - attitude, team player, can write, can speak, can run a small project - and are more than just Cisco pimps. I cannot explain how frustrating it is to meet a newly minted CCNP who has zero Linux experience, can't script anything, can't setup a syslog server, doesn't understand AD much less LDAP, etc. Imagine, an employee who can help themselves 90% of the time ... Finding the diamond that has strong niche skill, networking, with a broad just-deep-enough sysadmin background has been very, very hard. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of cross-training. Immensely valuable. Randal On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Bill Stewartnonobvi...@gmail.com wrote: And yeah, sometimes it means that you need to go learn technologies like Active Directory [snip] In addition to learning scripting languages __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ -- David Radcliffe Network Engineer/Linux Specialist da...@davidradcliffe.org www.davidradcliffe.org Nothing ever gets solved better with panic. If you do not know the answer, it is probably 42.
RE: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On 12/1/2011 10:21 AM, Leigh Porter wrote: - I am looking for just such a person now. Good Juniper, some Cisco and Sysadmin experience with an ISP background.. [...] So if anybody is looking for something to do around London... - Something I'd like to tell hiring folks lurking out there based on my experiences from living on an island far from population centers where all the jobs are... :-) One way to get such folks, as described in the previous posts, is to allow telecommuting. Have them come into the main office immediately after hiring them for 3-4 months, evaluate them and show them what's expected. Then let them go home to telecommute and have them come into the office a couple/few times a year for a week or two each time. They can even be required to work the same hours as the location where all the other engineers are. Or, on the big networks folks living in places like Hawaii can be the carry-over shift from US timezone to Asian timezones. This allows for a more productive employee many times because they are enjoying life where they live, rather than be forced into the larger population centers. In our industry, especially with all the tools we have today, it would seem that telecommuting would be more accepted, but it's not and I don't understand why. scott
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
The reason it is not more accepted is too many people still think If I cannot see you you must not be working. Since I like to work and code (I spend 10 hours a day on the computer at the office, think about work related stuff in the shower, and often write Perl code at home to deal with various household tasks) I work quite well at home. There are more distractions at the office and my productivity is greater in my home computer room during those times I have to put in some extra for the office. Actually, the best reason I have for working from home is I work much better when naked and they have asked me to stop showing up that way at the office. On Thursday, December 01, 2011 01:47:22 PM Scott Weeks wrote: On 12/1/2011 10:21 AM, Leigh Porter wrote: - I am looking for just such a person now. Good Juniper, some Cisco and Sysadmin experience with an ISP background.. [...] So if anybody is looking for something to do around London... - Something I'd like to tell hiring folks lurking out there based on my experiences from living on an island far from population centers where all the jobs are... :-) One way to get such folks, as described in the previous posts, is to allow telecommuting. Have them come into the main office immediately after hiring them for 3-4 months, evaluate them and show them what's expected. Then let them go home to telecommute and have them come into the office a couple/few times a year for a week or two each time. They can even be required to work the same hours as the location where all the other engineers are. Or, on the big networks folks living in places like Hawaii can be the carry-over shift from US timezone to Asian timezones. This allows for a more productive employee many times because they are enjoying life where they live, rather than be forced into the larger population centers. In our industry, especially with all the tools we have today, it would seem that telecommuting would be more accepted, but it's not and I don't understand why. scott -- David Radcliffe Network Engineer/Linux Specialist da...@davidradcliffe.org www.davidradcliffe.org Nothing ever gets solved better with panic. If you do not know the answer, it is probably 42.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 04:35:27PM -0500, David Radcliffe wrote: The reason it is not more accepted is too many people still think If I cannot see you you must not be working. actually, i've heard the real reason is corporate liability ... that said, there is an advantage for team f2f mtgs on a periodic basis. /bill
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
tyler, some additional soft skills that will help you distinguish yourself from others: - learn to write well: take some creative writing classes in addition to technical writing. being able to efficiently write clear, concise, and effective documentation is a skill that is necessary, and i daresay, required, especially for senior-level staff. - learn how to present/speak: join the local toastermasters. grok tufte's 'visual display of quantitative information' (or something similar -- this goes back to writing effective and concise documentation) - in addition to business and finance, learn negotiation techniques. 'getting to yes' is a good book; there are many others - learn time/task/project management: you should be able to accurately guage how long things take, task interdepence, and how to structure a (simple) project. try a few different methods to find one that works for you, and then build and rebuild your home lab using your project plan. this is also a good time to practise documentation ;) - get involved: join/start local users groups, go to a conference or two, subscribe to/read mailing lists on topics which interest you, or which are relevant to something you are studying/playing with - to reiterate what others have said: learn to troubleshoot. learn to troubleshoot. learn to troubleshoot. - develop an efficient, comprehensive methodology, and stick to it (a checklist can be helpful) - learn to take notes as you work through your procedure (what you did, what was the result: this will aid in writing both root-cause reports and operational procedures -- more documentation practise) - as you gain experience, re-evaluate and optimise, but be consistent in your approach - be able to explain and justify your procedure(s); teaching and learning from others makes you both better. mentoring will be an extremely valuable skill to your hiring manager/team (and will better position you for leadership roles) - learn how to use $favourite_search_engine in order to find answers you might also consider getting a juniper j-series box (or running bird on a *nix box, or three). a ccnp will teach you cisco's way, but most provider networks are heterogenous, and the ability to understand a non-cisco device (and moreover, a non-cisco-style cli/config), will benefit you long-term (imho). above all, have fun with what you are doing. this industry can be a lot of fun, but it is also stressful, and if you aren't enjoying what you are learning/doing, it might be time to re-evaluate your focus/priorities. hth /joshua
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Another really useful skill is knowing what it looks like to be a customer / end user of one of those networks. Sure, it's fun to crank obscure BGP load-balancing techniques, but you also need to know where the industry as a whole is going technically and business-wise. Tier 1s sell to Tier 2s, big enterprises, content providers, and consumers, and they all need different things. How much is computing staying under the control of the companies that use it vs. migrating out to cloud providers and Something-As-A-Service? What happens to networks as broadcast TV gets replaced by consumers downloading content? What do you know about end-users from hanging out with other college students that the old folks running the ISPs don't understand yet? Some parts of the Tier 1 business depend on providing access to large end user locations, which is more of an issue of zoning, real estate, and geography; other parts want to scale to hundreds of thousands of smaller connections. When I had a job that was more in the field than my current position, something I saw happening all the time was that people who worked for a customer would get a job at one of their vendors, or people who worked for a vendor would get a job at one of their customers. In bigger companies, that may also be internal end users and service organizations in addition to external customers. It's a big way that you build the relationships that lead to getting jobs and to finding people to hire. And yeah, sometimes it means that you need to go learn technologies like Active Directory, either because you might end up working for an enterprise instead of a service provider, or just because your customers will be using it and you need to know how it'll affect their network needs. In addition to learning scripting languages, you really need to learn some basic VMware, because operationally just about everything that doesn't need custom silicon is migrating onto virtual machines. You don't need to have a whole VMsphere N+1 system at home, but at least install the free versions on a PC, build some VMs and some virtual switches and let them talk to each other, do some firewalls, etc. The certification business is useful for a couple of things - giving you some direction in your learning process, telling people who are trying to hire new coworkers something about your skills, and getting your resume past the HR department so the people who actually understand what the jobs are can see it (or at least keeping them from getting in the way if you've made the connections through people you know instead of through HR.)
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
All excellent advice, but let me point out something else. I manage a team of backbone engineers and still do quite a bit of engineering work myself. When I interview, I never get caught up on certs or degrees. Now, do I ignore them? No, of course not. They do mean something and I know I worked hard for my JNCIE, so they add value. However, what I want to see is someone that is energetic and has a drive to learn, but the most important piece of my interviews once I am confident they meet my technical needs is the personality evaluation. I know my team works crappy hours, gets pulled 100 different directions and just really have a tough job sometimes. What I can't have is a toxic person added to the mix, no matter how ridiculously smart or qualified they might be. So there have been times I have turned away more qualified candidates just because I was not comfortable with their attitude or vibe. Hiring and firing is extremely difficult to correct if you make the wrong choice, and I have learned a thing or two over the years in this regard. That said, there is something else to consider too. In most large companies, the managers don't always have a lot of power when it comes to salaries and in some cases, even promotions. So, without specific experience and a salary history, you may be artificially held down due to HR policies no matter how well you do. I know that has happened a number of times at various places I have worked, and it is frustrating both for the candidate and the manager. There are many places where it is better to actually leave the company and come back to get around the HR constraints regarding salary augments from internal promotions. So, just be aware that even though you are working hard and going above and beyond, you might not always get initially rewarded for it. However, in time it will almost always correct itself, but even so, keeping a positive attitude and having a desire to learn will always benefit you in the end one way or another. Of course, once you get to the point of being in the industry for a long time like most of us here, you'll look back and say what the heck was I thinking, I should have been an accountant. Heh :) Best of luck, -Jeff On Nov 22, 2011, at 3:52 AM, David Swafford wrote: Scott's point is very true! Motivation will help you go very far, much farther than certs/knowledge alone. As a soon to be college-grad, be ready for the initial disappointment, :-), even though you'll have your CCNP, you have no real experience, so you'll start at the entry level. That's not a bad thing, but you might see it as such. The reason it is good, is that while at the entry level (networking that is, I'm not talking about a helpdesk), you'll get to touch and interact with a lot of different things with very little total responsibility. As you impress your peers, this will trickle up towards management, and eventually work it's way out into better tasks and larger responsibilities (try to not get caught up in the title). I'm speaking from experience here, I'm a senior network engineer for a $2 B company, yet only 25 years old, currently working on my R/S CCIE purely for the learning experience. It took me nearly 4 years to move from an associate to a senior in my company, which is not common in that short of a time-frame for my employer, but that's where the motivation piece comes in -- expressing true passion, and learning things because they are cool/interest you will take you far. Learning on paper is what you're taught in college and it only works so far, but learning from hand-on, like the lab you've got built, is where you attain the knowledge/troubleshooting/experience that will help you succeed. A comment earlier in the thread mentioned should I learn active directory/exchange? I hear this a lot from our fellow associate's on the team and to be honest, if you are learning something just to add it to your resume, that will be a waste of your time. But, if you are learning it because you find it interesting or just want to explore, then by all means go deep into it. I personally go by the motto go full in or don't go at all. So if I'm going to learn something, I'll get as deep as I can into it, and focus on just it for a little while, then I'll move to something else, and focus on just that. If you try to focus on too many separate things, you'll become this odd ball of knowledge that can't really hold you own -- a tip in the industry that will get you far: be able to take ownership, and fully run/own what you're working on. Regardless of level/title/role, a person who takes initive (within the scope/dynamic of their position), will go far. Best of luck to you, David. On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 5:32 PM, Scott Weeks sur...@mauigateway.com wrote: --- tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: From: Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com I'd love to have varied experience with a bunch
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:28:03 PST, Jeff Richmond said: Of course, once you get to the point of being in the industry for a long time like most of us here, you'll look back and say what the heck was I thinking, I should have been an accountant. Heh :) It's the rare accountant indeed that gets a phone call at 2AM saying that the books are on fire. ;) pgpClvx0ksYqA.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
There are more than a few people out there that will look down on you for your efforts - ignore them. The people who want you to give up are jealous because you're better than them. The people who are already better than you don't care about you because you're not as good as them. Q On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 4:52 AM, David Swafford da...@davidswafford.comwrote: Scott's point is very true! Motivation will help you go very far, much farther than certs/knowledge alone. As a soon to be college-grad, be ready for the initial disappointment, :-), even though you'll have your CCNP, you have no real experience, so you'll start at the entry level. That's not a bad thing, but you might see it as such. The reason it is good, is that while at the entry level (networking that is, I'm not talking about a helpdesk), you'll get to touch and interact with a lot of different things with very little total responsibility.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
and then there are the people who are excited to have one more person join the network of engineers. and (IMHO) the sentiments quoted by Quinn are signs of short-sighted people. Everyone is better at some things and worse at others. Don't ignore anyone, don't look down on anyone - you will find there are things to learn from everyone and you have something to teach everyone. as mentioned earlier - a good team player is hard to find. /bill On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 11:43:54AM -0700, Quinn Kuzmich wrote: There are more than a few people out there that will look down on you for your efforts - ignore them. The people who want you to give up are jealous because you're better than them. The people who are already better than you don't care about you because you're not as good as them. Q On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 4:52 AM, David Swafford da...@davidswafford.comwrote: Scott's point is very true! Motivation will help you go very far, much farther than certs/knowledge alone. As a soon to be college-grad, be ready for the initial disappointment, :-), even though you'll have your CCNP, you have no real experience, so you'll start at the entry level. That's not a bad thing, but you might see it as such. The reason it is good, is that while at the entry level (networking that is, I'm not talking about a helpdesk), you'll get to touch and interact with a lot of different things with very little total responsibility.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On 22/11/11 10:46 AM, Matthew Petach wrote: And then start experimenting and breaking things--some of your best understanding is going to come from breaking your setup when experimenting, and then figuring out why it broke, and how to get it working again in the way you want. Debugging dual-stack networks is going to be required knowledge by the time you hit the industry; no reason not to start learning and using the information today, to really get comfortable with it.) I know I'm days late replying into this thread, but I wanted to highlight and emphasize this comment. IMHO, the people who are most in demand are those who know how to fix stuff when someone else does something bone-headed and then can't fix it themselves and it gets bumped up the ladder to someone with super debugging skills who can fix it. So don't hesitate to do bone-headed things to break your setup, and then figure out how to fix it. +2 on working with dual-stacks and knowing everything you can about ipv6. From the questions we see here on nanog it's clear that there are a whole lot of people who should know more about how ipv6 works (and how to integrate it into an ipv4 network) but don't. When you graduate and are looking for that first job, you will likely come across a hiring manager who should know more about ipv6 but doesn't yet, and if you can position yourself as the person who can help with solving the ipv6 knowledge gap in that organization it could put you above other candidates with more experience but who don't know anything about ipv6, and get you that job. jc
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. Replying on-list, as I think a route for this desired target can be neatly summarized (oh, networking term!) in the following list: 1) be 2) do 3) have First, start by being the sort of person that might work at these places. Don't know how or who they are? -- meet a few, interview them, ask about their life, attent NANOG (student rate: $100/meeting) and have a drink or three with them, etc. Next, do the things they do--this may take a while. Finally, you can 'have' whatever they are having once you've traversed 1) and 2), assuming there's a spot on the far-side of this bet. You can thank Janet Plato (a great ex-Ann Arbor/ANS person) for this method. I hope she doesn't mind my paraphrasing here. Best, -Tk
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Scott's point is very true! Motivation will help you go very far, much farther than certs/knowledge alone. As a soon to be college-grad, be ready for the initial disappointment, :-), even though you'll have your CCNP, you have no real experience, so you'll start at the entry level. That's not a bad thing, but you might see it as such. The reason it is good, is that while at the entry level (networking that is, I'm not talking about a helpdesk), you'll get to touch and interact with a lot of different things with very little total responsibility. As you impress your peers, this will trickle up towards management, and eventually work it's way out into better tasks and larger responsibilities (try to not get caught up in the title). I'm speaking from experience here, I'm a senior network engineer for a $2 B company, yet only 25 years old, currently working on my R/S CCIE purely for the learning experience. It took me nearly 4 years to move from an associate to a senior in my company, which is not common in that short of a time-frame for my employer, but that's where the motivation piece comes in -- expressing true passion, and learning things because they are cool/interest you will take you far. Learning on paper is what you're taught in college and it only works so far, but learning from hand-on, like the lab you've got built, is where you attain the knowledge/troubleshooting/experience that will help you succeed. A comment earlier in the thread mentioned should I learn active directory/exchange? I hear this a lot from our fellow associate's on the team and to be honest, if you are learning something just to add it to your resume, that will be a waste of your time. But, if you are learning it because you find it interesting or just want to explore, then by all means go deep into it. I personally go by the motto go full in or don't go at all. So if I'm going to learn something, I'll get as deep as I can into it, and focus on just it for a little while, then I'll move to something else, and focus on just that. If you try to focus on too many separate things, you'll become this odd ball of knowledge that can't really hold you own -- a tip in the industry that will get you far: be able to take ownership, and fully run/own what you're working on. Regardless of level/title/role, a person who takes initive (within the scope/dynamic of their position), will go far. Best of luck to you, David. On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 5:32 PM, Scott Weeks sur...@mauigateway.com wrote: --- tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: From: Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com I'd love to have varied experience with a bunch of different companies, but first I'm trying to guarantee my first network engineering job out of college. --- You've already taken the first step. That step being you becoming more motivated than many of the other soon-to-be-graduates around you. This motivation will carry you a long way in your career. Who knows, you may be applying to someone here on this list one day... scott
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: 2011/11/21 valdis.kletni...@vt.edu On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:40:08 EST, Tyler Haske said: I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. ... I'd say their ultimate goal is to touch a little as possible which is usually as unglamorous as it sounds. Also, alot of things are scripted so much of what you touch may not be as fun. Tyler, this is absolutely key, and absolutely true; if you really, really want to get a jump in the industry, don't worry about learning active directory or exchange (unless it's a particular hobby interest of yours); instead, learn a good scripting language; PERL is the canonical example, but python or tcl are equally fine candidates these days. Most of the really big networks, whether access ISPs, content providers, or tier 1 transit networks try to automate as much of the work as possible; it's the only way to stay ahead of the demand curve. If you want to be a hot property in networking, you should have a good blend of network skills, scripting/development skills, and ideally enough system administration background to know how to make the boxes running those tools happy as well. Being able to understand the packet flow from the application, down through the OS, and onto the wire, and then back up again at the far end is going to make you much more useful than an engineer that just knows how to get bits from point A to point Z, but that's it. Being able to turn up a 100GE link by hand is useful; but being able to write a script to turn up dozens at a time--that's what networks will fight over to get. (Also...echoing an undercurrent from several of the other voices...set up an account on tunnelbroker.net, get a v6 tunnel going to your house, set up a linux box with your favorite flavour of DNS server on it; start learning how to handle v6 DNS zones, the odd and occasional challenges involved with dual-stacked hosts and different DNS entries. And then start experimenting and breaking things--some of your best understanding is going to come from breaking your setup when experimenting, and then figuring out why it broke, and how to get it working again in the way you want. Debugging dual-stack networks is going to be required knowledge by the time you hit the industry; no reason not to start learning and using the information today, to really get comfortable with it.) You'll find that many of us are happy to answer intelligent, well-thought-through questions; what we don't tend to like are answering questions that are easily found through quick search engine queries. If you've done your own exploration first, and come up empty, chances are it'll be an interesting enough question someone out here will be willing to give a shot at answering it for you. But if you ask questions that would be just as easily answered through spending 5 minutes with a search engine, you'll find even the best mentors will start to give you the cold shoulder. ^_^; And finally...don't get discouraged; if you're pretty sure this is what you want to do with your life, stick with it. There can be some big ups and downs in this industry, but the chance to build something really big that touches millions of lives every day brings with it that huge sense of accomplishment that only comes with achieving something on a truly global scale. Best of luck! Matt
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:40:08 EST, Tyler Haske said: I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. OK, so I'm not a mentor from a Tier-1, and I don't directly monkey with routers as part of $DAYJOB. But anyhow... :) With great power comes great responsibility. Be prepared for high stress levels. ;) Also, keep in mind that unless you're insanely brilliant, three things will happen before you get experienced enough to be a senior tech at a Tier 1: 1) You will have grey hair (at least some). 2) The half life of technical know-how in this industry is about 5 years. You'll have been through several half-lifes of what you'll know when you escape from college. Develop the skills needed to learn the next 3 or 4 Next Big Things quickly. 3) You'll have learned that handling a big pipe at a Tier 1 isn't all there is to running a network - and in fact, quite often the Really Cool Toys are elsewhere. Sure, they may have the fastest line cards, but they're going to tend to lag on feature sets just because you *don't* want to deploy cutting-edge code if you're a Tier-1. As an example, AS1312 deployed IPv6 over a decade before some of the Tier 1's could even *spell* it (find out why 6bone existed - it's instructive history). I'm sure that MPLS didn't make its first appearance in TIer-1 core nets either. And the list goes on.. (Hint - where did the Tier 1's get the IPv6/MPLS/whatever experienced engineers to guide their deployment? :) pgprsfp20Z7w7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
I really appreciate the specific insights offered by Keegan and Valdis. - Linking me places to apply for jobs doesn't help. I'm aware of who is considered Tier I, and how to find their website. - I'm in Kalamazoo Michigan, and I can commute up to 50 miles. I can't move until I finish my Bachelors in Computer Networking. - The job market here is bad. - I do have a home lab. (Cisco equipment) 2 3350s 2 2950s 4 2611XMs. - This isn't merely a technical request. I'd like support in this endeavor, from someone who's 'been there', to tell me things I CAN'T Google. Tyler.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 09:09:50AM -0500, Tyler Haske wrote: I really appreciate the specific insights offered by Keegan and Valdis. - Linking me places to apply for jobs doesn't help. I'm aware of who is considered Tier I, and how to find their website. - I'm in Kalamazoo Michigan, and I can commute up to 50 miles. I can't move until I finish my Bachelors in Computer Networking. - The job market here is bad. - I do have a home lab. (Cisco equipment) 2 3350s 2 2950s 4 2611XMs. - This isn't merely a technical request. I'd like support in this endeavor, from someone who's 'been there', to tell me things I CAN'T Google. Tyler. Valdis evolked fond memories... (built the 6bone's first node! and was part of the baseline mesh for over a decade, when it was dismantled) wrt your home lab. you are at a disadvantage (except of course for your certifications) in that the cool toys are not yet in vendor code. consider augmenting your kit w/ OSS versions of routing code (I still like zebra) and dig into fundamentals (ISIS BGP interaction, MPLS, esp with the still unstable OAM code - pick ITU/SG15 or IETF flavors -, consider where the market is headed... look into dynamic discovery in HIP networks, true mobility (not the mobile-IP that is current fashion))... if you are still keen, I can put you in touch w/ some good researchers doing dynamic BGP failover and over the Internet rekeying, if you want to collaberate on things. /bill
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Nov 21, 2011, at 9:09 AM, Tyler Haske wrote: I really appreciate the specific insights offered by Keegan and Valdis. - Linking me places to apply for jobs doesn't help. I'm aware of who is considered Tier I, and how to find their website. - I'm in Kalamazoo Michigan, and I can commute up to 50 miles. I can't move until I finish my Bachelors in Computer Networking. - The job market here is bad. - I do have a home lab. (Cisco equipment) 2 3350s 2 2950s 4 2611XMs. - This isn't merely a technical request. I'd like support in this endeavor, from someone who's 'been there', to tell me things I CAN'T Google. The problem is that even talking about commuting to grand rapids (next biggest city compared to kz, excluding bc) there aren't a lot of local places. There is a nice set of WISPs out there on the west side that may be interesting. There's a few interesting things to think about here: 1) The core space has gotten less interesting in recent years IMHO. While there are still cool things to do, there's more interesting ways to think about problems. 2) A multi-talented person is more useful than someone who thinks only about networking or hosts. This also comes with its own perils as you may not fit well in places that place you inside a box. 3) are you at WMU? Any openings there in the IT/Networking group? What about KVCC, or others? There used to be a more robust local community of ISPs out there (e.g.: net-link/corecomm/voyager). You may want to consider talking to the folks at Climax Telephone as well. They were doing some interesting things last I checked. Learn about the difference between purchasing and leasing. Understand the business side of the equation, not just the technical. These skills will bear fruit when you ask for hardware. Hope this helps some. The market does change quickly (but is becoming a bit slower in some ways) so do be prepared for the business constant of change. If you are unable to adapt to change, you will be left behind. - Jared
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Although it is outside of your current commuting distance, if you are looking to stay in Michigan, you might look into Merit in Ann Arbor, or one of the major universities. Merit has been around since the NSFNET/MichNet days. On November 21, 2011 at 9:09 AM Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: I really appreciate the specific insights offered by Keegan and Valdis. - Linking me places to apply for jobs doesn't help. I'm aware of who is considered Tier I, and how to find their website. - I'm in Kalamazoo Michigan, and I can commute up to 50 miles. I can't move until I finish my Bachelors in Computer Networking. - The job market here is bad. - I do have a home lab. (Cisco equipment) 2 3350s 2 2950s 4 2611XMs. - This isn't merely a technical request. I'd like support in this endeavor, from someone who's 'been there', to tell me things I CAN'T Google. Tyler.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On 22/11/11 03:09, Tyler Haske wrote: I really appreciate the specific insights offered by Keegan and Valdis. - Linking me places to apply for jobs doesn't help. I'm aware of who is considered Tier I, and how to find their website. Don't limit yourself to Tier 1's on the outset. A lot of Network Engineers have worked at least a couple of engineering roles before landing the one that best suits them. Companies usually want to hire experience. That experience coming from as many varied places as possible, actually has some value. In my own case, aside from pure bit-pushing I have had retail sales (electronics sector), technical support, sales, pre-sales and design experience as well as the hands-on engineering of supporting infrastructure (datacentre rack environments, electricity and environmental systems exposure, plus Layer 1-4+...) The disadvantage in angling directly to Tier 1 and working your way up within that organisation will be the potential lack of diversity in your experience. The best thing you can do (IMHO) in lieu of moving to a network-hub city for your hunt, is get your foot in the door with a company that has a significant need for input at the network level, that can help you get your start in terms of hands-on exposure to network operations and management. It'll give you some real-world perspective and it'll provide some of the experience that people will be looking for when reviewing your CV. If you have that, are visibly keen, flexible and continue to (visibly) develop your talents as an engineer, you'll never struggle for work. You can pidgeon-hole yourself pretty quickly if you narrow your skill-focus too far. Mark. PS: Accepted i'm not in the US, so YMMV, but nothing i'm saying strikes me as generically unreasonable.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
I appreciate the feedback so far. I'd love to have varied experience with a bunch of different companies, but first I'm trying to guarantee my first network engineering job out of college. Currently I'm studying for the CCNP, exam, with plans to do the CCIP also (its what I have the equipment for). Learning IPv6 is a good idea. With regards to a bigger lab I really wish I had more money to throw at equipment. (I'm aware I can emulate virtualize up to a point) I've looked at the career sites for Western, KVCC, Davenport, CTS Telecommunication, Charter Communication and Stryker today, and nothing is posted. How aggressive should I be at trying to work at one of these places? I really don't have a solid plan for getting a job after graduation. Should I sidetrack and learn Active Directory and Exchange for instance? It would make me more marketable, but distract me from my goals. Tyler
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
2011/11/21 valdis.kletni...@vt.edu On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:40:08 EST, Tyler Haske said: I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. OK, so I'm not a mentor from a Tier-1, and I don't directly monkey with routers as part of $DAYJOB. But anyhow... :) With great power comes great responsibility. Be prepared for high stress levels. ;) Also, keep in mind that unless you're insanely brilliant, three things will happen before you get experienced enough to be a senior tech at a Tier 1: 1) You will have grey hair (at least some). Not at all required.. Although you may grow a few belt loops and maybe ruin a marriage or two trying to get there early. Also, don't forget to read, cert guides, config guides, websites, RFC's. Grey hair and wisdom aren't mutually inclusive. 3) You'll have learned that handling a big pipe at a Tier 1 isn't all there is to running a network - and in fact, quite often the Really Cool Toys are elsewhere. Sure, they may have the fastest line cards, but they're going to tend to lag on feature sets just because you *don't* want to deploy cutting-edge code if you're a Tier-1. Totally agree. I touch alot of routers some of them close to what Tier-1 would use. I also have a few friends that work in large ISP's. I'd say their ultimate goal is to touch a little as possible which is usually as unglamorous as it sounds. Also, alot of things are scripted so much of what you touch may not be as fun. As an example, AS1312 deployed IPv6 over a decade before some of the Tier 1's could even *spell* it (find out why 6bone existed - it's instructive history). I'm sure that MPLS didn't make its first appearance in TIer-1 core nets either. And the list goes on.. (Hint - where did the Tier 1's get the IPv6/MPLS/whatever experienced engineers to guide their deployment? :) Also, how many junior and mid-level guys leave a Tier I for a network where they can touch things and then come back as experts. Also, the intermediate job tends to pay for certs and training which is a plus.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
--- tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: From: Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com I'd love to have varied experience with a bunch of different companies, but first I'm trying to guarantee my first network engineering job out of college. --- You've already taken the first step. That step being you becoming more motivated than many of the other soon-to-be-graduates around you. This motivation will carry you a long way in your career. Who knows, you may be applying to someone here on this list one day... scott
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 02:32:53PM -0800, Scott Weeks wrote: --- tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: From: Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com I'd love to have varied experience with a bunch of different companies, but first I'm trying to guarantee my first network engineering job out of college. --- You've already taken the first step. That step being you becoming more motivated than many of the other soon-to-be-graduates around you. This motivation will carry you a long way in your career. Who knows, you may be applying to someone here on ===-- replying this list one day... line-wrapped that for you scott... gift bows are USD2.00 extra. scott /bill
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. why not just apply as a tech at any of the dozen or so large ISP's in the US? http://www22.verizon.com/jobs/ https://recruiting.level3.com/ENG/Candidates/default.cfm http://www.tatacommunications.com/careers/ I'm sure some google-searching (or bing or whatever) would lead you in the right direction.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
What Chris said Get a job in the industry.. work like crazy learning as much as you can to learn, get involved in the industry to make connections. -jim On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 10:47 PM, Christopher Morrow morrowc.li...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Tyler Haske tyler.ha...@gmail.com wrote: I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. why not just apply as a tech at any of the dozen or so large ISP's in the US? http://www22.verizon.com/jobs/ https://recruiting.level3.com/ENG/Candidates/default.cfm http://www.tatacommunications.com/careers/ I'm sure some google-searching (or bing or whatever) would lead you in the right direction.
Re: Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.
Well, thats two mentors - and now one from the old school Why wait? Start Now. Use the resources Chris gave you others you find, take Jims advice re total commitment, and then weigh that in the balance w/ your academic path. (noting that vendor credentials are good for the HR folks filtering the krill, but are not a reliable indication of skill or passion) Look for an internship while in school. Something part time. Build little ISPs in your dorm room using the VM tools and build/test complex topologies and random failure modes. Pipe size is one thing, engineering in your sleep is something else. of course YMMV. /bill (now too old/slow to run w/ the big dogs)
