July 30, 2025 • 46 mins
Making a career transition is never easy, especially in specialized technical domains. In this episode, we dive into the world of professional evolution with returning guest Will Collins, who shares his journey from cloud networking at Alkira to automation engineering at Nintex.
"I'm not lazy, but I hate repetition," Will explains, describing the mindset that led him toward automation throughout his career. This natural inclination eventually blossomed into a specialized focus, demonstrating how following your technical interests can create new career pathways. His experience mirrors my own recent transition from Aviatrix to a network security-focused role, giving listeners multiple perspectives on navigating change in the networking industry.
The conversation explores how cloud experience fundamentally transforms your technical thinking – shifting your approach from traditional infrastructure management to a more developer-oriented mindset. We discuss how cloud environments break down traditional silos, forcing networking professionals to collaborate with application teams and security specialists in ways that weren't necessary in traditional data centers. This cross-functional experience creates valuable T-shaped professionals who understand both the depth of networking and the breadth of adjacent technologies.
We also tackle tough questions about the evolution of networking as a discipline. Has it expanded, contracted, or simply morphed into something new? Will suggests "it's been watered down or diluted," pointing to the consolidation of networking and security responsibilities in many organizations. This trend requires today's professionals to master multiple domains while still maintaining core expertise.
For those contemplating their next move, we offer practical advice on evaluating opportunities, balancing risk at different career stages, and the importance of developing fundamental understanding rather than relying on AI shortcuts. As Will counsels, "Learn one thing... actually learn it. That is what's going to keep you marketable in 2035, 2040."
Connect with our guest:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-collins/
https://packetpushers.net/podcast/the-cloud-gambit/
Purchase Chris and Tim's new book on AWS Cloud Networking: https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Advanced-Networking-Certification-certification/dp/1835080839/
Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking News
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Will (00:13):
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cables to
Clouds podcast.
My name is Chris Miles andjoining me always is my lovely
co-host, tim McConaughey, out ofI'm assuming warm and sunny
Raleigh, north Carolina.
I don't know what it's likethere now.
Tim (00:30):
Death ray sunny.
Will (00:31):
Yeah, there you go, but yeah, thanks for joining us.
We have a fun one today.
We have a good friend of theshow.
Hasn't been on in a while, sowe're always glad to have him
back.
Welcome back, our good friendwill collins.
How you doing, man?
Chris (00:47):
good, what's up, fellas?
And I think, yeah, it must behot where we're tim's at,
because he he shaved the beard.
Tim (00:52):
So yeah, it was too.
It was too much.
Will (00:54):
It must be too much furnace yeah, well, yeah, I
remember like the beard alwayshit me the worst when I was like
cutting grass and I was like,okay, I feel it, but now it's
part of my look.
It's like glasses.
You know, when people can't getrid of their glasses, I can't
get rid of this beard.
Man, there's no telling what'sunderneath.
It's probably a double chin,whole kind of all this stuff
(01:16):
under there.
Who knows, there you go.
Chris (01:26):
I can't shave mine because my kids, like my
daughter when she was three,four, I think, she was three um,
I came out and I had shaved,for I think it was a wedding or
something I had to go to where Ineeded to be clean, shaven and
she didn't.
She wouldn't even come to thekitchen table and eat, like if I
was in the room.
She was not in the room.
It was terrible and this wenton for like weeks like it wasn't
just over really quick.
Ever since then I've had atleast a shorter beard.
(01:46):
In the winter it gets a littlelonger, but I'm not going
through that again.
It was brutal Nice.
Will (01:53):
She'll be like 20 years old and she still won't
recognize you when you see hershe's going to bring that up
whenever you get older as atraumatic experience, like when
dad shaved yeah.
Chris (02:05):
She still brings it up every once in a while she's like
remember that time?
I'm like, do you reallyremember?
And she's like, I think, but Ihear the story, yeah, yeah
that's awesome.
Will (02:15):
Well, all right, let's uh, let's get into today's topic.
So we brought will on becausewe wanted to um, do an episode
basically about careertransitions.
So you know, as we've talkedabout a bit on the show, I just
recently changed jobs.
Will just recently changed jobs.
You know, I was previously atAviatrix, a cloud networking or
(02:36):
cloud security company.
Now, but cloud networkingfocused, will came over from
Alkira who was also at a cloudnetworking startup.
So to say so I think we but wekind of went down different
paths, right, like, I'm going alittle bit more down the network
security track and he's goinginto the automation track a bit.
So I wanted to bring Will onand just kind of talk about that
(02:58):
process and talk about, youknow, maybe we'll talk a bit
about how the skills that we'vetaken from one and how they'll
translate to the other, wherethe market is at with some of
these things, and really justkind of share some of our
stories and hopefully givefeedback to listeners who may be
thinking about the same thingor headed in that direction.
So let's start out.
(03:20):
So Will tell us a little bitabout, um, your career change.
Tell us about, uh, what wentinto your decision-making
process um, and, and what waseasy, what was difficult for you
.
Chris (03:33):
That's a good question.
Uh, over time, you know, as youlearn and you grow, you just
pick up different skills, andespecially with like where the
industry is right now.
I don't want to say it's rare,but it's kind of rare to find
somebody that is just dedicatedto like route switch, at least
in our generalists, like ifwe're working for vendors or you
(03:53):
know, startups, uh, enterprise,like a lot of times you have to
, you're almost, like, forced tobe somewhat of a generalist.
And network engineers, I mean,since I've been in the industry,
have always kind of been.
They've had to be somewhat of ageneralist.
And network engineers, I mean,since I've been in the industry,
have always kind of been.
They've had to be adjacent,they've had to be generalists in
a lot of things while alsobeing deep in route switch.
But one thing that I just wasalways interested in, since,
(04:16):
like I I'm I'm not lazy, but Ihate repetition, I hate doing
like okay, like I remember umway, way back before, even
automation was really a thing.
Managing like Linux servers,like logging in, typing a
command, doing some things,logging out, logging into the
next one and doing that throughlike a spreadsheet with like 100
lines, it's like torture.
(04:38):
Oh yeah, I never like to dothings like that.
I've always tried to automateeverything that is worth
automating and I also think itwas kind of fun.
But I've been automationadjacent really with every role
probably I've ever had in tech.
Like that's been that skillthat I've kind of brought to the
table.
I learned so much.
Alkira was my first startup.
You know the cloud market iswhere it is.
(05:00):
And one thing that I realizedthat I loved even more than
before when I was at Alkira wasgetting to.
You know I'd done a lot withTerraform at that point.
But getting in and you knowseeing, you know building the
provider, working on with theteam that did that.
You know building a lot ofmodules, doing a lot of like
well-architected Terraform forcustomers.
You know going through andseeing all the great ways that
(05:21):
it can be deployed.
But also you know some of thetechnical debt that hampers
things and I just thought youknow what?
Why not?
You know I love this automationstuff so much and it's not I've
never worked for a company thatyou know that was their bread
and butter.
Like that was the thing theydid, like their sole focus, you
know, is you know Alkira.
Life went on and you know youyou get to the point you're
fully vested and you have otherlike areas that you think you
(05:45):
could grow more in and I thoughtyou know what.
That's a great reason to lookat.
Another opportunity is you knowthat new role might offer a
path to you know advancing someof the skills that you really
love, the things that you liketo do, and then you know that
company might invest inadditional training mentor.
You, just you, learn a lot andI'm not saying to enter that
(06:07):
decision in haste.
You know, never jump fastwithout looking especially as
you get more tenured in yourcareer, but if you have an area
that is really interesting toyou, yeah, so that's kind of
what happened with me, and nowI'm at attention and I'm loving
it.
Will (06:22):
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think it was that before Imade my change.
It was like something that Imulled over for months and
months and months, like beforelike, and then you know things
would pop up and I was like, oh,that would, that could be nice.
But yeah, it's, if it'ssomething that's been in the
back of your mind and you, like,are looking for a new challenge
, then you know, kind kind ofjust it's going to bubble to the
(06:43):
top eventually.
Chris (06:44):
Yeah and new and shiny is always fun too.
So, like I once when I was inenterprise, like I made I
literally made a jump to acompany just because they were
rolling out sd-wan and thecompany I was working for at the
time thought it was like a andwe wanted to like mpls,
everything you know.
I was like okay, like I'm atthe point where, like I've hit
this blocker, like I'm notlearning anymore, like I can
(07:05):
learn a little bit more and I'mjust doing the same old things.
Will (07:09):
And I want to learn this new text out there.
Chris (07:12):
I want to learn about it, you know so.
Especially at the ground floor,like in the earlier SD-WAN days
, it just it was a tremendousexperience.
I'm so glad I did that and Ilearned so many lessons.
Experience.
I'm so glad I did that and Ilearned so many lessons.
And, um, the company that Ileft from I was at for 10 years
at that time and I I made thatjump to go into this shiny
SD-WAN place.
(07:32):
Uh, and that was.
I was more scared about that.
I think the longer you spendsomewhere, the harder it is to
jump ship, unless things getreal bad.
Tim (07:42):
Sure, absolutely.
I mean when I and mean and thewhole shiny new thing I agree
with, because you know, threeand a half years ago now, when I
left Cisco, I actually lovedworking for Cisco.
Cisco is a great company.
What made me leave was I wasstudying for my cloud computing
degree and realizing, the more Ilearned about cloud that, like
(08:05):
at that time, cisco didn'treally have anything really for
cloud.
Even the SD-WAN hooks at thattime were really really basic
and not really cloud, not cloudnative, not cloud friendly.
Like at that time I've heardit's gotten a lot better.
But I'm just saying at thattime.
So that's why I was like, ohman, if I want to stick with the
cloud, if gotten a lot better.
But I'm just saying at thattime.
So that's why I was like, ohman, if I want to stick with the
(08:27):
cloud, if I want to actuallywork on the cloud, I gotta go
somewhere that's doing cloudright.
So that's at that time.
That's why I went to aviatrix.
I was in the same boat with you, you know, and I I was, I'd
been there for five years.
So, yeah, it was.
Will (08:36):
It definitely was hard to hard to make that jump, yeah,
and it's funny you call out willthe, the concept of you know
kind of.
There's a lot of people outthere that just want to focus on
route switch and that's reallyjust like, sadly, not a thing
anymore.
But I mean to be honest, thishappened, I mean with SD-WAN,
this happened as well.
Right, like people were like oh, like that was a new concept
(08:59):
that was like routing andswishing based, but it
definitely had all this likepolicy routing and things like
that built into it where peoplejust like couldn't come.
Like, if you, if you had likean mpls background, I think
sd-wan was very easy to toingest and take on, but the
people that only focused on likelayer 2 switching, you know um
(09:20):
oh yeah, it's like routing.
It was like magic.
But I think people were kind ofupset then that some of the
controls or some of theautopilot stuff was added in,
where they were like no, I wantto be able to control all of
this.
And it's like that's not howthe company wants you to spend
your days anymore.
(09:40):
Right, you got to be kind ofmultifaceted, right.
Chris (09:43):
Yeah, yeah, do more with a lot less.
Yeah, spamming ai is evenpushing that more.
It's like how much can wepossibly squeeze out of one
individual?
And, yeah, and, and you'reright at the route switch thing,
I mean, unless you're in a verynarrowly focused like uh, if
you're, you know.
So of course, service providerspace is going to be a little
bit different.
You do have people that stillexist, that are just real, true
(10:06):
CCIE, expert route, tcp, ipninjas out there, you know, but
it's few and far between, andthe market and other conditions
have diluted that, I think.
But you, I mean, you still haveto have that.
You want to have those peoplein the world, you know, and it's
like it's funny because I thinkI have this prediction and I
(10:27):
don't know.
I haven't said this publicly, ofcourse, but I talked to
somebody that I know is like a,a plumber, and he actually went
into plumbing from doingsomething completely different
because he saw this thing in themarket where there was just no
plumbers during covid, and hehas been making dollars hand
over foot.
I mean, he's crushing it being aplumber and he fast tracked it.
(10:52):
He didn't have a family, hejust got in there, learned the
trade, did a quickapprenticeship with someone and
eventually I say eventually,like in under a year I think he
went out on his own and he'sjust crushing it and he doesn't
like, he likes it and he has ateam under him now and they're
just, you know, doing all sortsof business and that's the thing
.
Supply and demand is alwaysgoing to exist.
You know, at one point in thefuture, if there's not enough
(11:14):
bgp folks out there, I believeyou know it'll make a resurgence
.
You're gonna have really highlypaid bgp route switch people
that are just narrowly focusedin that, if you see such a time
in the world where they quit,there's not as many of them.
Because you have to have thatskill.
I mean you want to be able toflush your toilets, right, I
mean I should call cobaltprogrammers side.
Will (11:35):
Yeah, I don't like digging holes, so yeah, I mean cobalt's
never going away.
Tim (11:39):
Cobalt programmers, fortran programmers, like there they'll
be.
There won't be a million jobsfor them, but there will be
those jobs and those jobs willpay, like you know and you might
pay psychologically if you haveto go back and learn cobalt
after being in these new hipsterlanguages like go and such.
Will (11:57):
Yeah, go back in time, yeah just thought of the meme
like if.
It's like, if, if there are amillion bgp fans, I am one of
them.
If there's one bgp fan, that isme.
If there's zero bgp fans, I amdead.
That's, that's kind of mystance on that.
I'm a bgp lifer, yeah, um, allright.
So let's let's get back ontopic a bit here.
So obviously, like we said, weboth went to kind of these cloud
(12:21):
networking startups, to kind ofI think both Will and I were
kind of skating towards the puckon this kind of multi-cloud
network services, multi-cloudnetwork architecture thing.
That didn't pan out exactly howthe market anticipated it would
, but nonetheless I think therewas a lot of skills and traits
(12:42):
with working specifically incloud, like that from a
networking perspective, thatwere super valuable.
So maybe let's get into some ofthose.
Will, what about working inspecifically cloud networking?
What skills like that do youthink properly transitioned over
to your new vertical, newvertical and automation that
you're at now?
Chris (13:01):
going, going in and like learning cloud.
So back to my point of likenever I, I don't like doing
things in repetition.
You have to fight me to likelog into the aws console and do
things in the ui like I want toautomate all the things.
But there's a different way.
There's a different way thatyou think when you go up to
cloud and that's something thatif you're stuck you've been in
(13:23):
the data center world for toolong, I see it's kind of hard to
change your thinking becausereally what you do is you go
into this world of not being100% beholden to physical
hardware anymore, because ifyou're automating physical
hardware, it's just going to bea little bit different.
So cloud automation just giventhe nature of how many changes
(13:44):
get made in cloud all the time,there's a lot more changes
happening.
You're dealing with pipelines,multi-stage pipelines, being
able to have, you know,different branches tying to
different stages of yourinfrastructure.
You know test, pre-prod, youknow production and having like
automation, guardrails, securitywrapped around all these things
(14:05):
in like an automated fashion.
The shift left.
So getting into that mindset ofmutable versus immutable.
How, like infrastructure, whenyou deploy cloud infrastructure,
you're thinking more like anapplication developer, you're
not thinking like a route switchengineer in a data center.
For me, like one thing that Ilearned a ton and this was
(14:25):
before startup I took over acloud practice for a big company
and got to build out a teamafter that like an actual cloud
networking team and that I triedto recruit Chris for and he
gave me the a nice kick in theshins and uh, you're.
I'm always gonna bring that upevery time we talk.
I forgot about that you dodged,I think you might have dodged a
bullet, though, so good for you.
(14:46):
Um, but yeah, like, gettingthat, that experience of like,
okay, I'm thinking different,I'm thinking more like a
developer.
Those are some of the things Ithink that cloud teaches you,
and then you also realized that,okay, just because we're doing
cloud doesn't mean we don't havesome crazy heavy dependency on
premises right kind of likeLeads to why your show exists, I
(15:08):
believe is because things aregonna be hybrid forever at this
point.
Tim (15:12):
I think so at least why I'm alive.
Chris (15:14):
It'll be like the adoption of IP v6, like, oh,
it's gonna be cloud, only IDon't yeah.
Tim (15:19):
I going to be cloud only.
Yeah, I don't think cloud onlywas ever going to happen.
The cost alone would have madeit impossible, much less the
life cycles and the legacy appsand all that other stuff.
It's never.
Will (15:32):
Just wait till that economy of scale kicks in man.
Tim (15:35):
Yeah, anytime.
Now We'll start saving you tonsof money.
Will (15:38):
Yeah, no, that's a great point, will, I think?
Um?
One other thing that was veryvaluable for me, just working in
the cloud space, just kind ofin in general um, was that every
, every company that you talk to, like specifically being in
sales, um, or on the pre-saleside things, you talk to so many
(15:59):
different companies that areall at different stages of cloud
transition, right, either somethat are very mature or they
just started it and because ofthat, the people that you're
talking to have a very varyinglevel of cloud maturity and you
know, like at the place thatjust started, you might be
(16:20):
talking to the only cloud personat that company and they kind
of are doing everything underthe sun.
Or you're talking to a biggercompany that has like everything
kind of in its own onjurisdiction type type thing.
But it's weird because I feltlike we were commonly like, as
far as infrastructure people,developers, application people,
(16:42):
we were always in the same roomwhenever we had to have a
conversation about what to dowith cloud.
I feel like on-prem, you werenever really talking to those
people.
Like I would never talk to adeveloper, like no reason to
Like, it's just give me the TCPand UDP ports that you need open
on your app and I'll and I'llhelp you out, but like it's I
(17:03):
don't know like you learn how totalk to people at different
stages or different parts of thestack, and I feel like that was
just kind of helping meunderstand the holistic picture
of of what a solution needs tolook like, so I thought that was
very valuable for me.
Chris (17:18):
I never thought about that before until you said it.
You're absolutely spot on, likeI remember one of the big
companies I worked at that wasdoing this cloud, you know,
abouting all the things.
I think that was maybe one ofthe first times they had this
big modernization project andthey actually had everybody.
This was when people werecoming into the office still and
they basically, for the peoplethat weren't local, they were
(17:41):
flying them in or they weredriving in like some of them
were pretty close, like ohio,not too too far, but we were.
We had a whole floor toourselves, um, in louisville and
we just they, they had a bigbuffet table like in the middle
of this floor and to get thethis program like off the ground
, we had everybody, fromdatabase to just what would
become our cloud ops team, tothe folks designing the, like me
(18:05):
and the small team I had.
And then even like bcdr you know, business continuity, folks,
disaster recovery, becausethat's a huge thing, and I
remember distinctly like talkingto these folks, they didn't
understand cloud.
They're just like we managebcdr for this company, what,
what are we doing here?
And so like taking them andseeing them mature.
You know, actually that's agood, that's a good scenario
(18:27):
where being in person actuallywas really valuable.
There was whiteboardseverywhere.
We were like if you had aquestion you needed an answer,
you just got up and walked a fewfeet and talked to the person.
That was like the expert andand we got a lot of things off
the ground pretty quick.
Yeah, that was maybe the firsttime I've ever been on the same
floor with all these folks atthe same time or even talked to
some of them.
Tim (18:46):
Really, yeah, I think.
I think that's valuable fornetwork engineers, because
network engineers live in thatinfrastructure layer, which
means that, just like sysadmins,they tend to be like I don't
know if it's a reputation it'ssomewhat deserved, depending on
the engineer but like, sometimesthey get like that bastard
operator from hell type ofeither the mentality or at least
(19:08):
the view or the image, if youwill, and you know some lean
right into it.
They're like yeah, I'm thecurmudgeon and you know, I don't
need to know anything about you, you, you, I treat everybody
equally and I own the roads foreverybody and I don't need to
know anything about your app.
And it's actually kind of doinga disservice to the
infrastructure people to do that, because you're cutting
(19:30):
yourself out of the conversationabout what is the right way to
be doing this right.
Will (19:35):
If you want to behave that way, go be a Linux
administrator.
Linux administrator likeeverybody else that's right,
those guys.
Chris (19:40):
Nobody cares anything about what they have to say grow
that beard a little longer, timyou're out of luck, man I'm
working on my neck too uh, thereyou go.
Yeah, just do your neck onlyand leave everything else, and
then make a tiktok got my fedorabeard, tiktok and then dance
and you're gonna get, you'regonna go viral, well, so
(20:00):
something that's interesting.
So, like, one thing that Iwanted to discuss um at the
beginning is well, if you're inyour career, in your tenure, and
you've been around quite awhile, it's like investing in
the stock market, like whenyou're getting closer to to
retirement.
You're in your late 40s, early50s you're gonna probably not
take as many risks.
You're in your late 40s, early50s you're going to probably not
take as many risks.
You're going to take it easy,like for those long term, you
(20:23):
know, invest in those mutualfunds, indexes, 401ks, you know,
exhaust that and then let yourstuff grow.
You know, but you might be takemore of a risk taker early on
in your career.
And one thing that I, orsomebody that actually like I
don't want to say like we had afew discussions.
I wouldn't say it was a mentor,but he planted the seed in my
head like early on in my careeranyway, he had this sort of
(20:45):
mentality of like grow yourselfat all costs when you're young.
So if you can, according to him, just go.
If you can get valuableexperience, go work for someone
for free, do that for a year,get your feet under you and then
go crush it.
Because if you go somewherethat's already established and
you don't get to touch a lot ofthings, you don't have a good
(21:06):
opportunity to learn, you're notgoing to grow as fast.
That was one thing that I alwaysI actually did this early on in
my career is I took a job thatdid not pay as well as the job
that I had at the time at all,like it did not pay good, and I
went there and I learned a tonand you know I did that.
I made that move because of whatthey were working on and I knew
one of the folks there and whatI was going to be working on.
(21:28):
And I'm really glad I did thatbecause it's like, ok, I didn't
have a family at the time, Iwasn't married, I didn't have
all this responsibility.
I'm young and stupid and stilllearning and you know I got a
PhD in some of these, not like aliteral PhD, but an experience
doing some really cool thingsand that sort of, I think,
(21:49):
helped set me up for success.
Would I do that now?
Definitely not.
I'm a little more wiser, I knowa little more.
I've worked a lot longer andnow I'm more.
You know tactical about makingthat move.
But if you're younger in yourcareer and you have that
opportunity to go and reallylearn from really amazing people
(22:09):
, take that chance, go for it.
Will (22:12):
Yeah, I love that.
If you need a, if you need alesson and experience, go see Dr
William Collins.
He's got his PhD.
Tim (22:19):
You need a if you need a lesson and experience, go see dr
william collins.
He's got his phd.
No, it's a phd in mpls or bgpor um, it's I.
Will (22:28):
I will say I actually find it quite um admirable that you
did that, even even in youryounger stages, because, um,
I'll I've said it on the showand, like I was when I was
younger, I was very focused bymoney.
Like I like if someone said,take this job, you'll get so
much experience but it'll payyou, like literally you'd be
(22:49):
like they'll pay you ten dollarsless than what your current job
is.
I'd be like no way not doingthat like it.
Like I think I've mentioned onhere, the only reason I got my
CCNA was because somebody toldme he's like, oh, if you get
this, you can make 50 K.
And I was like I was like fuck,that sounds like like a billion
dollars, like.
And then eventually it startedclicking and I found a passion
(23:11):
for it.
But like, yeah, I, I'm, I'mcurious, like I guess, where are
you still?
Were you living on your?
Chris (23:20):
own at the time, I assume or are you like I was not
living on my own, I was stillactually I lived.
I lived with my grandma for atime because it worked out
beneficially for both of us.
She wasn't working at the time,so I was able to kind of help
out with rent and some otherthings Nice, and it just made
sense.
So, yeah, I was living with mygrandmother at the time.
Will (23:39):
Nice, yeah, I think if you have, but I was definitely
kidless and not married, youknow.
Yeah, if you have one of thosesituations, it's probably like I
could.
If I was in that situation, Iprobably would have been in.
But like, yeah, I could make dowith this, but like I don't
know, from the second I was likeI'm never, I'm never asking for
a handout for anything, likeeverything has to be built on my
(24:00):
own back.
So everything's got, I got tomake so much money and, yeah,
now, now I'm at the stage whereI'm like, oh yeah, I'd probably
take a bit of a pay cut if itwas like a fulfilling job, right
, and it actually like provideda level of value into my life
that I don't currently have.
Chris (24:20):
Um, so it's.
It's funny how things kind offlip on their head.
Yeah, and you may.
It's good to have good peoplearound you too, like I was
fortunate early on in my careerwhere I had a few good people
that just gave me like trulygood advice, and I know I know a
lot of people that didn't havethat.
In fact, I know some peoplethat got very bad advice from
people that they trusted, and ifI would have gotten bad advice
from people I trusted, Iprobably would have taken that
(24:42):
advice and I wouldn't have knownany better.
So that's one of the greatthings about having podcasts
like this or different wateringholes that you can go and you
can learn from.
We have the Internet now andthere's a lot of smart people
like you all out there likegiving good advice from
experience, like livedexperiences, and that's so good
for for folks coming up in the,you know, in the talent pipeline
(25:02):
now yeah, until we're allreplaced by ai.
Tim (25:05):
There's a talent pipeline not.
Chris (25:08):
Are you even real tim?
Are you ai right now?
Uh, would you know thedifference?
Would you know?
Tim (25:12):
this is the deep fake couldn't figure it out, so it
just took it off.
There we go, uh, no, I mean myfirst, my first real networking
job was, uh, on the nmci right,the navy marine corps internet
talk about your crib, right.
Like it was very, veryregimented and I learned a
decent amount working in theknock.
But I was in the same boat thatyou were in.
Like I was like all right, I'mdone, like I've learned
(25:34):
everything there is to learn.
I can't touch anything thatdoesn't have 10 layers of
approval.
I can't author my own configs.
So when I had the chance to jumpto an enterprise that was where
I would do everything likesecurity, data center, collab
all of it and get to go all overthe world, I did it.
I jumped at it.
For me it wasn't a pay cut,though it wasn't.
(25:57):
It also wasn't.
It was also a huge risk,honestly, and I did it with a
wife and a kid at the time.
So you know that's dumb on me,but it paid off.
But like this was we?
Literally we moved to, theymoved us, they paid for this to
(26:22):
move because it was in likeidaho falls idaho, where they
had to, basically, you know, payfor people to come there.
So, but like I can't make thisup, a week after we landed there
and we'd moved and we're awayfrom all our family and friends,
uh, my wife finds out thatshe's pregnant with our second
daughter.
So it it was.
It was rough, right, but butthe point is the job though,
though, like I learned so muchthat's how I, that's how I ended
up at, eventually ended up atCisco was because I learned like
(26:42):
everything about everything,and I could not have probably
gotten that experience elsewhere, so it was still good Right.
Chris (26:48):
Yeah, I'd say another good reason to move is like as
you get more tenured and youlike you work with a lot of
technology, like kind of we weretalking about cloud and data
center like if you you reallyhave a love for cloud and you
start looking for opportunities,even like the jump I made and
the jump Chris just made.
They're not different fields,they're kind of adjacent, you
(27:09):
know.
You know, one thing that I'velearned as I've gotten older is
just, if I'm going to make jump,I don't like switching jobs.
Switching jobs is hard, it's apain.
Yeah, like all the paperwork,all the benefits, all the
different things, especiallylike if you did open enrollment
and then you switch jobs in likeMarch, like I've done twice oh
my god, it's like I have to doopen enrollment two times in a
(27:31):
row and I just want to cry likeit's not for the faint of heart,
but you.
one of the things that you oughtto do is you know in that
interview process, if you don'tknow, inner workings of the
company like evaluate thecompany, their tech stack and
you can usually get there byasking the right questions in
(27:57):
the interview you can get enoughdetails to where you can kind
of put the picture together of,like what is going on at this
company.
Like I like I've worked withJenkins before the CICD tool and
it's literally a Swiss armyknife.
It can do like anything.
But how custom do you want toget with all your stuff, you
know.
But after working with you knowat other places that use like
alternative platforms that kindof maybe took away some features
(28:20):
in favor of simplicity, likehey, that's something that is
kind of important to me at thetime.
I don't want to be a Jenkinsadministrator at that point.
Will (28:29):
I want to work on other.
Chris (28:30):
I want the CICD to kind of get out of my way and I will
trade in some features and someflexibilities for that if
necessary.
So you know work, you know lookat places where they're doing,
they're building somethingthat's important to you and
they're using tools and andtechnology stack that you want
to use.
Tim (28:49):
So don't just jump into anything blindly so this is
interesting because they're andthis might be a little bias on
our part or a little blindnesson our part, but like what I
hear a lot from people that arebrand new to the industry is
like I can't break in because Idon't know.
You know tool X.
I don't have experience withtool X or tool Y, so there's a
little bit of a chicken and eggproblem with leveraging that and
(29:13):
I don't know how to.
I don't know the right way torecommend getting around that,
you know but yeah, it's twothings like for one.
Chris (29:22):
It's easier today to learn stuff that it ever has
been, but it's also harder thanit ever has been to break into a
role.
Yes, yeah I think part of thatis market saturation and just
having so many people on themarket that are gunning for the
same jobs that's got to be partof it.
Tim (29:38):
Because it's so easy to learn.
You mean yeah, yeah and a lotof roles.
Chris (29:42):
I mean, one thing is everything used to that remote
work was like unheard of.
I mean, I don't even think halfof us didn't ever even use our
VPNs because like we would first, you know drive into the office
to do things.
Yeah, if you were only hiringand your talent pool is only
like a place.
Like you're tied down togeography hey, in that point.
Like the market is notsaturated with a ton of tech
(30:04):
workers, right, you're limitedto the talent pool in your city,
yeah, they'll relocate somefolks every once in a while but
hey, that's much easier to getyour foot in the door somewhere
and you don't have that.
That the culture, everything'sjust changed.
So where you might think it'seasier to work, you know the
remote work brings, but I thinkin some ways it's actually
harder to get a job with remotework because of the saturation
(30:26):
in the market yeah I thinkyou're with remote work of it,
like your talent pool is isobviously a little bit more
dispersed as well, right, right,so like there's stronger
competition, Competition, yeah,Across the board.
Will (30:40):
But like I mean, obviously I think tech in terms of a kind
of a career focus is currentlylike we probably thought a few
years ago it was at criticalmass, but it's at critical mass
again with AI, so like it justkeeps going right and I don't
know.
It's kind of hard to gaugewhether network engineering as a
(31:02):
career has expanded, stayed thesame or constricted.
What do you feel Will as far aswhat you've seen in the market?
Chris (31:10):
I feel like it's been watered down or diluted as far
as the impressions of whatnetworking I mean.
I guess we can always say thatit's always been that way to a
degree.
But I see, I feel like I seeand feel that a lot more lately,
and you see, things like withthe way that, like I don't want
to say that sassy's like thething that brought this on, but
(31:30):
this, the consolidation of howdifferent disciplines have been
mashed together.
Will (31:36):
You see like security and networking come together yeah,
exactly, tim.
Chris (31:40):
And so with that it's like, okay, I don't have a like
my what I used to have asecurity engineering team and a
network engineering team, andnow I just have network and
security engineering with twoless people so yeah, and with
less budget as well, usually,yeah, I'm seeing the growth of a
lot of teams.
Will (31:59):
Um, at least here in australia it's like like, kind
of some of the bigger banks thatare that are here and things
like that there's not.
There's not a dedicatednetworking team.
There's a secure networkingteam.
Where it's like oh yeah kind ofeverything falls into that
category.
Um, whereas obviously thingswere, were a little bit.
I mean, people that knewnetworking probably also knew
(32:20):
firewalls and things like that.
But security is such a broadercategory now we're talking about
like certificate management.
Tim (32:30):
Oh, there's a lot.
Will (32:30):
Yeah, so there's so much that goes into it.
That just has blown up.
But, like, even the networkingteam is not dedicated to just
networking most of the time,there has to be some secure
element in there.
Tim (32:42):
When I worked at the enterprise I was talking about I
mean literally, I wasn't jokingwe ran the call center
applications, so CUCM and allthat.
We built the data center, ofcourse.
We built the networking for theoffices.
We did all of the security, sofirewalling, just any securing
(33:03):
IPS, ids, all that crap.
And, yeah, all the servers, allthe identity stuff.
The sysadmins pretty much onlybuilt servers for the most part.
That was the thing.
Whatever applications were onthe servers, like Outlook and
the Microsoft suite and all that, that, they, you know, they
owned that.
But like I felt like we ownedlike way more, like you know,
(33:24):
and I don't think that's unusualfor an enterprise.
Will (33:26):
So what you're telling me is this is cyclical, is we?
We were at one point wherenetwork engineers had to know
everything and then they went tojust having to maintain
networking, and now we're backto them having to be t-shaped
right.
Tim (33:39):
I think some well, some places I feel like they never
stopped right, like depending onthe size of the enterprises you
were at, like I don't thinkthey ever stopped being
everything right, maybe just thejob listings have changed that
is true yeah, you're right aboutthe like like real security
engineering, like like networkengineers.
Chris (33:58):
if you've been traditionally a network engineer
, like, ok, are you, have youdealt with MTLS?
And OK, like actually MTLS, theway that this interaction
happens, you're, you'revalidating both sides.
It's not a TCP handshake, Ipromise you it's not.
I had this debate with somebodythe other day that was telling
me it was the same thing.
Tim (34:19):
I'm like bro bro they operate a different.
Chris (34:20):
Like what are we talking about here?
Application stack come on, man,you're like a route switch
expert.
Like what are you talking about?
You clearly never dealt withcertificates in mtls before.
Um, what's going on?
But two different things.
You know, like mtls is gonnabuild on your, your, your tcp
connection, you know, andthey're just two different
layers certificates, um, andthese things.
A lot of times, like in, atleast when I first started, I
(34:42):
had to do like cert replacementson like css load balancers and
then eventually, oh yeah I did aton of css or, uh, cert
replacements, but at that pointin my career I didn't understand
certs, I didn't understand certauthorities.
I didn't understand like I didthe work, I didn't understand
the principles behind thosethings until later in my career
(35:04):
and I think that's somethingthat a lot of um, some network
engineers did do those things orthey had to learn those things
to actually help out with cloudfolks that were kind of like
quasi full stack developers thatwere then tasked with managing
certs up in the cloud for, forvarious reasons.
So, like I, that's someone thatI talked to a while back.
(35:24):
That was like he was workingfor a company it wasn't a big,
big company, I think it kind oflike maybe considered mid-market
, I don't know smaller.
He was in this, in the throesof this kind of this same thing
where they had like a dedicatedlike his company.
They had like two securityfolks and one of them it was
like a single point of failurethat handled all the search, did
all these things had been withthe company for like ages and
(35:47):
then they started doing somecloud things and that person I
guess had joined like the introcall to discuss like cert
management and like loadbalancers in the cloud or
something or another, and thenended up leaving and going
somewhere else with like, not alike.
It wasn't even like a two weeksnotice, I don't know.
I think something happened andlike.
I don't know if there was a badrelationship or a fight or
(36:09):
whatever, but anyway he had tostep up to the plate and start
working on these things that hethought that he knew, because
he'd like rotated certs andinstalled certs and swapped
certs out.
He didn't really know how theyworked and so he had to do this
eat, breathe, learn certs, learnsocket layer stuff, learn more
about application layer, movingbeyond, like layer three and
(36:30):
layer four.
And then, like, looking back,it's like, oh he, that's the
best thing I ever did Learning.
You know, I really got in thesecurity world now and you know,
now he has a security job,which is kind of funny.
Will (36:42):
I think that's the tough part is usually when you're kind
of breaking in or you maybehave a entry level or kind of a
junior position, the like, your,your sole focus for a very long
time is just the how, it's notthe why, right, um, it's just
like, hey, like, we need thisdone.
You know you got this ticket,you need to do this.
(37:03):
So, like you're focusing on,like, what cli config to put in
to to get this done, or whathave you right?
And it's like, and I like forthe last like 10 years, I'm just
like, look, I don't, don't wantto see CLI, I don't give a shit
.
Tell me how this works Like, howlike or why you'd need this to
happen in the first place,because then I can draw a
logical path.
(37:24):
And then you know the config isjust something you look up,
right.
But it's like when you'reyounger or early on, it's like
you want to jump in, you want tobe able to do this stuff,
because it looks like you're inthe matrix, when you're in a
terminal console, right, but um,you know, it's uh, it's tough.
It's tough to to kind of pullback and and and look at the
early stages, cause that's notthe fun stuff.
Chris (37:45):
And like to your point how do you get a job?
No-transcript, I don't knowmuch about that trade per se,
(38:21):
but I don't know if that's theway it always works, but the way
that he made it, the way thathe told that story to me, like
made me think in my head likewe've, we've mucked this up, we
don't do this right.
Tim (38:32):
Like all right.
Chris (38:33):
No, we're just like throw you to the wolves, get your
CCNA, learn the command linesyntax.
And here's my productionnetwork.
Folks, have fun.
Tim (38:40):
Yeah, Right, Yep and no.
Chris (38:41):
by the way, there's no there's no like gate saying no,
(39:04):
we're going to make sure thatyou've sat under a practice
network engineer or somethinglike you've really learned it in
that way to really validateyour skills and teach you not to
take shortcuts.
Teach you how to learn theimportant things so that you can
grow, and doing that will helpyou grow quicker later on.
Tim (39:25):
So it's not even it's a shortcut in and of itself, if
you think about it yeah, we needapprenticeships, but it's funny
you're right that nobody doesit, and I think maybe it's yeah,
we need apprenticeships, butit's funny you're right that
nobody does it.
And I think maybe it's becauseit's not considered a trade,
because generally you seeapprenticeships with trades and
nothing else, or like I guessyou could consider a residency
for like a doctor would be kindof like an apprenticeship, but
like true apprenticeship likeyou're talking about, it is
(39:46):
pretty much just done withtrades.
Chris (39:58):
For whatever reason, we only do it with trades.
I think it's coming to a t,though, and I'll tell you why.
So we just mentioned two things.
Like I mentioned electric andyou mentioned um doctors.
Like if a doctor you know readshis quote-unquote ccna of
working on um, removing anappendix book and and like kill
somebody, that's not good.
And if I go and I I'm anelectrician, I read a book and I
burned someone's house down,like equally not good.
And I think with technology fora long time, like there's OK,
like technology didn't driveeverything.
(40:19):
Now technology is connected tothe things that are powering and
keeping humans alive.
And you know, it's just sointegrated with everything now
that it's OK.
If technology breaks, it's,it's a serious problem, and you
know serious problem Hospitalnetworks.
Exactly so hopefully it changes.
Will (40:37):
I'm just sitting here wondering how Will knows so many
tradesmen.
Man, I imagine you're just outhanging out with all your
buddies and they're all talkingabout hands-on tools and you're
just like yeah guys, I'm at mycomputer all day.
Chris (40:51):
So shout out to my hockey team, the Monarchs, I play ice
hockey, there you go, that'll doit.
I have a world like seriouslyworld renowned cardiologist
Vipple, who works over at NortonIncredible.
And I have two trade worker.
I actually have two doctors andthree, three trade workers just
on my one team.
(41:11):
You know Nice.
Three, three trade workers juston my one team.
You know, nice, it's so, it'sso funny that the things like a
sport in our, our adult liveswill bring but yeah, you're all
living out that dream.
Will (41:19):
You can, your bodies will still let you play hockey till
the day you die, right?
Tim (41:22):
so, man, I had to get I even beat up now I even had to
give up on indoor soccer.
I couldn't keep up, man, goodfor you.
Yeah, I'm losing it though I'mgonna.
Chris (41:31):
I I have like knee.
I don't want to say I have likeknee issues, but like my knees
they.
They sound like the fourth ofjuly when I go up the stairs.
I don't know what's going onlike I just had.
Will (41:40):
I had knee surgery like a year, a year and a half ago
because of softball.
Like literally nothing happened.
Just took a weird step and, yep, you need surgery after that.
That's how.
Chris (41:50):
That's how that's how the body works.
You don't recover quick either.
Like I hyperextended comingdown, I thought I was at the
last stair.
Tim (41:58):
Oh, I hate that.
I hate that when you overstepit.
Chris (42:03):
It messed me up for like a month, like it was so, and it
wasn't even that bad.
Yeah, it's just your body.
Will (42:13):
Like once you hit 35, 40, you start breaking down.
I guess I don't know.
Now I sneeze and my back hurts,which is great.
Tim (42:18):
Yeah, which one of you has the knee?
The trick knee for when itrains?
Will (42:23):
I broke my ankle when I was 19, and I still feel that
thing every time it rains.
It's quite weird, yeah.
Chris (42:31):
Yeah, I broke my ankle a few years ago playing hockey.
Actually, I blocked a shot in atournament and took a puck
right on the inner ball, theankle, and it like shattered the
end of it and like a bunch ofpieces.
It was disgusting don't worry.
Will (42:42):
Pretty soon you'll know when it's about to rain just by.
Chris (42:44):
Yeah, my kids are like making fun of me.
Like I'm on the couch, myfoot's huge, like dad your foot
looks like a balloon with thingssticking out of it.
Tim (42:53):
Yeah, isn't that great.
Will (42:57):
Ha, ha, ha, all right.
Well, yeah, I think we're aboutat time here, so let's go ahead
and wrap up for today.
So, thanks, will, for coming on, I guess.
Lastly, let's see, do you haveany parting thoughts for maybe
folks out there that areconsidering a transition?
Not that this, this current jobmarket, is the best time to be
(43:20):
making a transition, but, uh,you know it's.
It's not always the best time,you know, I think, when it
happens right, and that's kindof why changing jobs is so
difficult.
So I guess, in your opinion,what, uh, what kind of advice or
parting thoughts do you havefor those that are considering?
Chris (43:30):
So is a real thing.
It's here to stay, but don'tget lost in it.
Learn your.
Learn one thing, like whetherit's network engineering, like
applicate, like learn aprogramming language, but
actually learn the things.
Don't like let right the codeagents build everything for you.
Like actually learn it, becausethat is what's going to keep
(43:51):
you marketable in 2035, 2040.
Will (43:55):
You know, as you grow in your career learn.
Chris (43:56):
Take the time to learn something and don't rely on
augmenting your skills with theAIs.
Learn it.
Read the books, do the work,yeah.
Tim (44:05):
I mean, I'm doing the work.
Chris (44:06):
There is no shortcuts, even with AI.
Even with AI, if you give AI toa really smart, like a legend
visionary software developer,they could probably 10x and
produce more work quicker ifdone right.
But you just you can't takeshortcuts.
You've got to learn howdistributed systems are
distributed systems.
We're bound by geography andlots of things that aren't going
(44:28):
away anytime soon.
So learn one of these verticals.
That's all I got Don.
Learn one of these verticals.
Tim (44:33):
That's all I got.
Don't listen to William man,Just vibe code the shit out of
everything.
Chris (44:40):
I'm not saying you know what.
I actually startedexperimenting with this
quote-unquote vibe coding maybetwo weeks ago.
I started using Clod Code alittle bit just to explore see
what I could do yeah and allthat stuff and it's magical.
I wouldn't want to bet my wholecareer on what I was gonna say.
Tim (44:59):
What are you putting in a prod having vibe coded?
Will (45:01):
that yeah yeah, yeah, all right guys.
Well, with that, we'll uh,we'll uh say our goodbyes.
So thanks listening, especiallyif you made it to the end.
Please share this with a friend, subscribe, do all that crap,
whatever you want to do.
Tim (45:24):
Maybe unsubscribe, oh, and Will actually, before we do this
, will.
Do you have anything you wantto pimp, or you know, announce,
or you know where can peoplefind?
Chris (45:30):
you, yeah, so William-Collins on LinkedIn.
So the Cloud Gambit recentlygot picked up by Packet Pushers,
so we're subscribed to the newRSS feed and see us on the
Packet Pushers network and allthe Cloud Gambit social medias
that I had.
Since, you know, packet Pushersis doing the promotions and
(45:50):
they have their brand, I re.
You know what.
It's so hard finding a name forany social media handle now.
Will (45:55):
Everything's taken up.
Chris (45:56):
Everything.
I was like just trying to findsomething, you know.
So I changed all those socialhandles to macro engineered,
because that's what I feel likeI'm doing all the time, like
wide breadth of all the macrothings.
Tim (46:10):
I thought it was going to be Club Gander PP.
Will (46:18):
No, but that would have been pretty funny.
Yeah, it was probably just.
Everyone's probably just handlesquatting on, uh, on tiktok and
all that kind of stuff, um, so,yeah, all right.
Well, on my third attempt, wewill finally say goodbye and, uh
, we'll see you in a coupleweeks.
Goodbye, take care guys.
Tim (46:30):
We'll see you in a couple weeks.
Goodbye, Take care guys.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cables to
Clouds podcast.
My name is Chris Miles andjoining me always is my lovely
co-host, tim McConaughey, out ofI'm assuming warm and sunny
Raleigh, north Carolina.
I don't know what it's likethere now.
Tim (00:30):
Death ray sunny.
Will (00:31):
Yeah, there you go, but yeah, thanks for joining us.
We have a fun one today.
We have a good friend of theshow.
Hasn't been on in a while, sowe're always glad to have him
back.
Welcome back, our good friendwill collins.
How you doing, man?
Chris (00:47):
good, what's up, fellas?
And I think, yeah, it must behot where we're tim's at,
because he he shaved the beard.
Tim (00:52):
So yeah, it was too.
It was too much.
Will (00:54):
It must be too much furnace yeah, well, yeah, I
remember like the beard alwayshit me the worst when I was like
cutting grass and I was like,okay, I feel it, but now it's
part of my look.
It's like glasses.
You know, when people can't getrid of their glasses, I can't
get rid of this beard.
Man, there's no telling what'sunderneath.
It's probably a double chin,whole kind of all this stuff
(01:16):
under there.
Who knows, there you go.
Chris (01:26):
I can't shave mine because my kids, like my
daughter when she was three,four, I think, she was three um,
I came out and I had shaved,for I think it was a wedding or
something I had to go to where Ineeded to be clean, shaven and
she didn't.
She wouldn't even come to thekitchen table and eat, like if I
was in the room.
She was not in the room.
It was terrible and this wenton for like weeks like it wasn't
just over really quick.
Ever since then I've had atleast a shorter beard.
(01:46):
In the winter it gets a littlelonger, but I'm not going
through that again.
It was brutal Nice.
Will (01:53):
She'll be like 20 years old and she still won't
recognize you when you see hershe's going to bring that up
whenever you get older as atraumatic experience, like when
dad shaved yeah.
Chris (02:05):
She still brings it up every once in a while she's like
remember that time?
I'm like, do you reallyremember?
And she's like, I think, but Ihear the story, yeah, yeah
that's awesome.
Will (02:15):
Well, all right, let's uh, let's get into today's topic.
So we brought will on becausewe wanted to um, do an episode
basically about careertransitions.
So you know, as we've talkedabout a bit on the show, I just
recently changed jobs.
Will just recently changed jobs.
You know, I was previously atAviatrix, a cloud networking or
(02:36):
cloud security company.
Now, but cloud networkingfocused, will came over from
Alkira who was also at a cloudnetworking startup.
So to say so I think we but wekind of went down different
paths, right, like, I'm going alittle bit more down the network
security track and he's goinginto the automation track a bit.
So I wanted to bring Will onand just kind of talk about that
(02:58):
process and talk about, youknow, maybe we'll talk a bit
about how the skills that we'vetaken from one and how they'll
translate to the other, wherethe market is at with some of
these things, and really justkind of share some of our
stories and hopefully givefeedback to listeners who may be
thinking about the same thingor headed in that direction.
So let's start out.
(03:20):
So Will tell us a little bitabout, um, your career change.
Tell us about, uh, what wentinto your decision-making
process um, and, and what waseasy, what was difficult for you
.
Chris (03:33):
That's a good question.
Uh, over time, you know, as youlearn and you grow, you just
pick up different skills, andespecially with like where the
industry is right now.
I don't want to say it's rare,but it's kind of rare to find
somebody that is just dedicatedto like route switch, at least
in our generalists, like ifwe're working for vendors or you
(03:53):
know, startups, uh, enterprise,like a lot of times you have to
, you're almost, like, forced tobe somewhat of a generalist.
And network engineers, I mean,since I've been in the industry,
have always kind of been.
They've had to be somewhat of ageneralist.
And network engineers, I mean,since I've been in the industry,
have always kind of been.
They've had to be adjacent,they've had to be generalists in
a lot of things while alsobeing deep in route switch.
But one thing that I just wasalways interested in, since,
(04:16):
like I I'm I'm not lazy, but Ihate repetition, I hate doing
like okay, like I remember umway, way back before, even
automation was really a thing.
Managing like Linux servers,like logging in, typing a
command, doing some things,logging out, logging into the
next one and doing that throughlike a spreadsheet with like 100
lines, it's like torture.
(04:38):
Oh yeah, I never like to dothings like that.
I've always tried to automateeverything that is worth
automating and I also think itwas kind of fun.
But I've been automationadjacent really with every role
probably I've ever had in tech.
Like that's been that skillthat I've kind of brought to the
table.
I learned so much.
Alkira was my first startup.
You know the cloud market iswhere it is.
(05:00):
And one thing that I realizedthat I loved even more than
before when I was at Alkira wasgetting to.
You know I'd done a lot withTerraform at that point.
But getting in and you knowseeing, you know building the
provider, working on with theteam that did that.
You know building a lot ofmodules, doing a lot of like
well-architected Terraform forcustomers.
You know going through andseeing all the great ways that
(05:21):
it can be deployed.
But also you know some of thetechnical debt that hampers
things and I just thought youknow what?
Why not?
You know I love this automationstuff so much and it's not I've
never worked for a company thatyou know that was their bread
and butter.
Like that was the thing theydid, like their sole focus, you
know, is you know Alkira.
Life went on and you know youyou get to the point you're
fully vested and you have otherlike areas that you think you
(05:45):
could grow more in and I thoughtyou know what.
That's a great reason to lookat.
Another opportunity is you knowthat new role might offer a
path to you know advancing someof the skills that you really
love, the things that you liketo do, and then you know that
company might invest inadditional training mentor.
You, just you, learn a lot andI'm not saying to enter that
(06:07):
decision in haste.
You know, never jump fastwithout looking especially as
you get more tenured in yourcareer, but if you have an area
that is really interesting toyou, yeah, so that's kind of
what happened with me, and nowI'm at attention and I'm loving
it.
Will (06:22):
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think it was that before Imade my change.
It was like something that Imulled over for months and
months and months, like beforelike, and then you know things
would pop up and I was like, oh,that would, that could be nice.
But yeah, it's, if it'ssomething that's been in the
back of your mind and you, like,are looking for a new challenge
, then you know, kind kind ofjust it's going to bubble to the
(06:43):
top eventually.
Chris (06:44):
Yeah and new and shiny is always fun too.
So, like I once when I was inenterprise, like I made I
literally made a jump to acompany just because they were
rolling out sd-wan and thecompany I was working for at the
time thought it was like a andwe wanted to like mpls,
everything you know.
I was like okay, like I'm atthe point where, like I've hit
this blocker, like I'm notlearning anymore, like I can
(07:05):
learn a little bit more and I'mjust doing the same old things.
Will (07:09):
And I want to learn this new text out there.
Chris (07:12):
I want to learn about it, you know so.
Especially at the ground floor,like in the earlier SD-WAN days
, it just it was a tremendousexperience.
I'm so glad I did that and Ilearned so many lessons.
Experience.
I'm so glad I did that and Ilearned so many lessons.
And, um, the company that Ileft from I was at for 10 years
at that time and I I made thatjump to go into this shiny
SD-WAN place.
(07:32):
Uh, and that was.
I was more scared about that.
I think the longer you spendsomewhere, the harder it is to
jump ship, unless things getreal bad.
Tim (07:42):
Sure, absolutely.
I mean when I and mean and thewhole shiny new thing I agree
with, because you know, threeand a half years ago now, when I
left Cisco, I actually lovedworking for Cisco.
Cisco is a great company.
What made me leave was I wasstudying for my cloud computing
degree and realizing, the more Ilearned about cloud that, like
(08:05):
at that time, cisco didn'treally have anything really for
cloud.
Even the SD-WAN hooks at thattime were really really basic
and not really cloud, not cloudnative, not cloud friendly.
Like at that time I've heardit's gotten a lot better.
But I'm just saying at thattime.
So that's why I was like, ohman, if I want to stick with the
cloud, if gotten a lot better.
But I'm just saying at thattime.
So that's why I was like, ohman, if I want to stick with the
(08:27):
cloud, if I want to actuallywork on the cloud, I gotta go
somewhere that's doing cloudright.
So that's at that time.
That's why I went to aviatrix.
I was in the same boat with you, you know, and I I was, I'd
been there for five years.
So, yeah, it was.
Will (08:36):
It definitely was hard to hard to make that jump, yeah,
and it's funny you call out willthe, the concept of you know
kind of.
There's a lot of people outthere that just want to focus on
route switch and that's reallyjust like, sadly, not a thing
anymore.
But I mean to be honest, thishappened, I mean with SD-WAN,
this happened as well.
Right, like people were like oh, like that was a new concept
(08:59):
that was like routing andswishing based, but it
definitely had all this likepolicy routing and things like
that built into it where peoplejust like couldn't come.
Like, if you, if you had likean mpls background, I think
sd-wan was very easy to toingest and take on, but the
people that only focused on likelayer 2 switching, you know um
(09:20):
oh yeah, it's like routing.
It was like magic.
But I think people were kind ofupset then that some of the
controls or some of theautopilot stuff was added in,
where they were like no, I wantto be able to control all of
this.
And it's like that's not howthe company wants you to spend
your days anymore.
(09:40):
Right, you got to be kind ofmultifaceted, right.
Chris (09:43):
Yeah, yeah, do more with a lot less.
Yeah, spamming ai is evenpushing that more.
It's like how much can wepossibly squeeze out of one
individual?
And, yeah, and, and you'reright at the route switch thing,
I mean, unless you're in a verynarrowly focused like uh, if
you're, you know.
So of course, service providerspace is going to be a little
bit different.
You do have people that stillexist, that are just real, true
(10:06):
CCIE, expert route, tcp, ipninjas out there, you know, but
it's few and far between, andthe market and other conditions
have diluted that, I think.
But you, I mean, you still haveto have that.
You want to have those peoplein the world, you know, and it's
like it's funny because I thinkI have this prediction and I
(10:27):
don't know.
I haven't said this publicly, ofcourse, but I talked to
somebody that I know is like a,a plumber, and he actually went
into plumbing from doingsomething completely different
because he saw this thing in themarket where there was just no
plumbers during covid, and hehas been making dollars hand
over foot.
I mean, he's crushing it being aplumber and he fast tracked it.
(10:52):
He didn't have a family, hejust got in there, learned the
trade, did a quickapprenticeship with someone and
eventually I say eventually,like in under a year I think he
went out on his own and he'sjust crushing it and he doesn't
like, he likes it and he has ateam under him now and they're
just, you know, doing all sortsof business and that's the thing
.
Supply and demand is alwaysgoing to exist.
You know, at one point in thefuture, if there's not enough
(11:14):
bgp folks out there, I believeyou know it'll make a resurgence
.
You're gonna have really highlypaid bgp route switch people
that are just narrowly focusedin that, if you see such a time
in the world where they quit,there's not as many of them.
Because you have to have thatskill.
I mean you want to be able toflush your toilets, right, I
mean I should call cobaltprogrammers side.
Will (11:35):
Yeah, I don't like digging holes, so yeah, I mean cobalt's
never going away.
Tim (11:39):
Cobalt programmers, fortran programmers, like there they'll
be.
There won't be a million jobsfor them, but there will be
those jobs and those jobs willpay, like you know and you might
pay psychologically if you haveto go back and learn cobalt
after being in these new hipsterlanguages like go and such.
Will (11:57):
Yeah, go back in time, yeah just thought of the meme
like if.
It's like, if, if there are amillion bgp fans, I am one of
them.
If there's one bgp fan, that isme.
If there's zero bgp fans, I amdead.
That's, that's kind of mystance on that.
I'm a bgp lifer, yeah, um, allright.
So let's let's get back ontopic a bit here.
So obviously, like we said, weboth went to kind of these cloud
(12:21):
networking startups, to kind ofI think both Will and I were
kind of skating towards the puckon this kind of multi-cloud
network services, multi-cloudnetwork architecture thing.
That didn't pan out exactly howthe market anticipated it would
, but nonetheless I think therewas a lot of skills and traits
(12:42):
with working specifically incloud, like that from a
networking perspective, thatwere super valuable.
So maybe let's get into some ofthose.
Will, what about working inspecifically cloud networking?
What skills like that do youthink properly transitioned over
to your new vertical, newvertical and automation that
you're at now?
Chris (13:01):
going, going in and like learning cloud.
So back to my point of likenever I, I don't like doing
things in repetition.
You have to fight me to likelog into the aws console and do
things in the ui like I want toautomate all the things.
But there's a different way.
There's a different way thatyou think when you go up to
cloud and that's something thatif you're stuck you've been in
(13:23):
the data center world for toolong, I see it's kind of hard to
change your thinking becausereally what you do is you go
into this world of not being100% beholden to physical
hardware anymore, because ifyou're automating physical
hardware, it's just going to bea little bit different.
So cloud automation just giventhe nature of how many changes
(13:44):
get made in cloud all the time,there's a lot more changes
happening.
You're dealing with pipelines,multi-stage pipelines, being
able to have, you know,different branches tying to
different stages of yourinfrastructure.
You know test, pre-prod, youknow production and having like
automation, guardrails, securitywrapped around all these things
(14:05):
in like an automated fashion.
The shift left.
So getting into that mindset ofmutable versus immutable.
How, like infrastructure, whenyou deploy cloud infrastructure,
you're thinking more like anapplication developer, you're
not thinking like a route switchengineer in a data center.
For me, like one thing that Ilearned a ton and this was
(14:25):
before startup I took over acloud practice for a big company
and got to build out a teamafter that like an actual cloud
networking team and that I triedto recruit Chris for and he
gave me the a nice kick in theshins and uh, you're.
I'm always gonna bring that upevery time we talk.
I forgot about that you dodged,I think you might have dodged a
bullet, though, so good for you.
(14:46):
Um, but yeah, like, gettingthat, that experience of like,
okay, I'm thinking different,I'm thinking more like a
developer.
Those are some of the things Ithink that cloud teaches you,
and then you also realized that,okay, just because we're doing
cloud doesn't mean we don't havesome crazy heavy dependency on
premises right kind of likeLeads to why your show exists, I
(15:08):
believe is because things aregonna be hybrid forever at this
point.
Tim (15:12):
I think so at least why I'm alive.
Chris (15:14):
It'll be like the adoption of IP v6, like, oh,
it's gonna be cloud, only IDon't yeah.
Tim (15:19):
I going to be cloud only.
Yeah, I don't think cloud onlywas ever going to happen.
The cost alone would have madeit impossible, much less the
life cycles and the legacy appsand all that other stuff.
It's never.
Will (15:32):
Just wait till that economy of scale kicks in man.
Tim (15:35):
Yeah, anytime.
Now We'll start saving you tonsof money.
Will (15:38):
Yeah, no, that's a great point, will, I think?
Um?
One other thing that was veryvaluable for me, just working in
the cloud space, just kind ofin in general um, was that every
, every company that you talk to, like specifically being in
sales, um, or on the pre-saleside things, you talk to so many
(15:59):
different companies that areall at different stages of cloud
transition, right, either somethat are very mature or they
just started it and because ofthat, the people that you're
talking to have a very varyinglevel of cloud maturity and you
know, like at the place thatjust started, you might be
(16:20):
talking to the only cloud personat that company and they kind
of are doing everything underthe sun.
Or you're talking to a biggercompany that has like everything
kind of in its own onjurisdiction type type thing.
But it's weird because I feltlike we were commonly like, as
far as infrastructure people,developers, application people,
(16:42):
we were always in the same roomwhenever we had to have a
conversation about what to dowith cloud.
I feel like on-prem, you werenever really talking to those
people.
Like I would never talk to adeveloper, like no reason to
Like, it's just give me the TCPand UDP ports that you need open
on your app and I'll and I'llhelp you out, but like it's I
(17:03):
don't know like you learn how totalk to people at different
stages or different parts of thestack, and I feel like that was
just kind of helping meunderstand the holistic picture
of of what a solution needs tolook like, so I thought that was
very valuable for me.
Chris (17:18):
I never thought about that before until you said it.
You're absolutely spot on, likeI remember one of the big
companies I worked at that wasdoing this cloud, you know,
abouting all the things.
I think that was maybe one ofthe first times they had this
big modernization project andthey actually had everybody.
This was when people werecoming into the office still and
they basically, for the peoplethat weren't local, they were
(17:41):
flying them in or they weredriving in like some of them
were pretty close, like ohio,not too too far, but we were.
We had a whole floor toourselves, um, in louisville and
we just they, they had a bigbuffet table like in the middle
of this floor and to get thethis program like off the ground
, we had everybody, fromdatabase to just what would
become our cloud ops team, tothe folks designing the, like me
(18:05):
and the small team I had.
And then even like bcdr you know, business continuity, folks,
disaster recovery, becausethat's a huge thing, and I
remember distinctly like talkingto these folks, they didn't
understand cloud.
They're just like we managebcdr for this company, what,
what are we doing here?
And so like taking them andseeing them mature.
You know, actually that's agood, that's a good scenario
(18:27):
where being in person actuallywas really valuable.
There was whiteboardseverywhere.
We were like if you had aquestion you needed an answer,
you just got up and walked a fewfeet and talked to the person.
That was like the expert andand we got a lot of things off
the ground pretty quick.
Yeah, that was maybe the firsttime I've ever been on the same
floor with all these folks atthe same time or even talked to
some of them.
Tim (18:46):
Really, yeah, I think.
I think that's valuable fornetwork engineers, because
network engineers live in thatinfrastructure layer, which
means that, just like sysadmins,they tend to be like I don't
know if it's a reputation it'ssomewhat deserved, depending on
the engineer but like, sometimesthey get like that bastard
operator from hell type ofeither the mentality or at least
(19:08):
the view or the image, if youwill, and you know some lean
right into it.
They're like yeah, I'm thecurmudgeon and you know, I don't
need to know anything about you, you, you, I treat everybody
equally and I own the roads foreverybody and I don't need to
know anything about your app.
And it's actually kind of doinga disservice to the
infrastructure people to do that, because you're cutting
(19:30):
yourself out of the conversationabout what is the right way to
be doing this right.
Will (19:35):
If you want to behave that way, go be a Linux
administrator.
Linux administrator likeeverybody else that's right,
those guys.
Chris (19:40):
Nobody cares anything about what they have to say grow
that beard a little longer, timyou're out of luck, man I'm
working on my neck too uh, thereyou go.
Yeah, just do your neck onlyand leave everything else, and
then make a tiktok got my fedorabeard, tiktok and then dance
and you're gonna get, you'regonna go viral, well, so
(20:00):
something that's interesting.
So, like, one thing that Iwanted to discuss um at the
beginning is well, if you're inyour career, in your tenure, and
you've been around quite awhile, it's like investing in
the stock market, like whenyou're getting closer to to
retirement.
You're in your late 40s, early50s you're gonna probably not
take as many risks.
You're in your late 40s, early50s you're going to probably not
take as many risks.
You're going to take it easy,like for those long term, you
(20:23):
know, invest in those mutualfunds, indexes, 401ks, you know,
exhaust that and then let yourstuff grow.
You know, but you might be takemore of a risk taker early on
in your career.
And one thing that I, orsomebody that actually like I
don't want to say like we had afew discussions.
I wouldn't say it was a mentor,but he planted the seed in my
head like early on in my careeranyway, he had this sort of
(20:45):
mentality of like grow yourselfat all costs when you're young.
So if you can, according to him, just go.
If you can get valuableexperience, go work for someone
for free, do that for a year,get your feet under you and then
go crush it.
Because if you go somewherethat's already established and
you don't get to touch a lot ofthings, you don't have a good
(21:06):
opportunity to learn, you're notgoing to grow as fast.
That was one thing that I alwaysI actually did this early on in
my career is I took a job thatdid not pay as well as the job
that I had at the time at all,like it did not pay good, and I
went there and I learned a tonand you know I did that.
I made that move because of whatthey were working on and I knew
one of the folks there and whatI was going to be working on.
(21:28):
And I'm really glad I did thatbecause it's like, ok, I didn't
have a family at the time, Iwasn't married, I didn't have
all this responsibility.
I'm young and stupid and stilllearning and you know I got a
PhD in some of these, not like aliteral PhD, but an experience
doing some really cool thingsand that sort of, I think,
(21:49):
helped set me up for success.
Would I do that now?
Definitely not.
I'm a little more wiser, I knowa little more.
I've worked a lot longer andnow I'm more.
You know tactical about makingthat move.
But if you're younger in yourcareer and you have that
opportunity to go and reallylearn from really amazing people
(22:09):
, take that chance, go for it.
Will (22:12):
Yeah, I love that.
If you need a, if you need alesson and experience, go see Dr
William Collins.
He's got his PhD.
Tim (22:19):
You need a if you need a lesson and experience, go see dr
william collins.
He's got his phd.
No, it's a phd in mpls or bgpor um, it's I.
Will (22:28):
I will say I actually find it quite um admirable that you
did that, even even in youryounger stages, because, um,
I'll I've said it on the showand, like I was when I was
younger, I was very focused bymoney.
Like I like if someone said,take this job, you'll get so
much experience but it'll payyou, like literally you'd be
(22:49):
like they'll pay you ten dollarsless than what your current job
is.
I'd be like no way not doingthat like it.
Like I think I've mentioned onhere, the only reason I got my
CCNA was because somebody toldme he's like, oh, if you get
this, you can make 50 K.
And I was like I was like fuck,that sounds like like a billion
dollars, like.
And then eventually it startedclicking and I found a passion
(23:11):
for it.
But like, yeah, I, I'm, I'mcurious, like I guess, where are
you still?
Were you living on your?
Chris (23:20):
own at the time, I assume or are you like I was not
living on my own, I was stillactually I lived.
I lived with my grandma for atime because it worked out
beneficially for both of us.
She wasn't working at the time,so I was able to kind of help
out with rent and some otherthings Nice, and it just made
sense.
So, yeah, I was living with mygrandmother at the time.
Will (23:39):
Nice, yeah, I think if you have, but I was definitely
kidless and not married, youknow.
Yeah, if you have one of thosesituations, it's probably like I
could.
If I was in that situation, Iprobably would have been in.
But like, yeah, I could make dowith this, but like I don't
know, from the second I was likeI'm never, I'm never asking for
a handout for anything, likeeverything has to be built on my
(24:00):
own back.
So everything's got, I got tomake so much money and, yeah,
now, now I'm at the stage whereI'm like, oh yeah, I'd probably
take a bit of a pay cut if itwas like a fulfilling job, right
, and it actually like provideda level of value into my life
that I don't currently have.
Chris (24:20):
Um, so it's.
It's funny how things kind offlip on their head.
Yeah, and you may.
It's good to have good peoplearound you too, like I was
fortunate early on in my careerwhere I had a few good people
that just gave me like trulygood advice, and I know I know a
lot of people that didn't havethat.
In fact, I know some peoplethat got very bad advice from
people that they trusted, and ifI would have gotten bad advice
from people I trusted, Iprobably would have taken that
(24:42):
advice and I wouldn't have knownany better.
So that's one of the greatthings about having podcasts
like this or different wateringholes that you can go and you
can learn from.
We have the Internet now andthere's a lot of smart people
like you all out there likegiving good advice from
experience, like livedexperiences, and that's so good
for for folks coming up in the,you know, in the talent pipeline
(25:02):
now yeah, until we're allreplaced by ai.
Tim (25:05):
There's a talent pipeline not.
Chris (25:08):
Are you even real tim?
Are you ai right now?
Uh, would you know thedifference?
Would you know?
Tim (25:12):
this is the deep fake couldn't figure it out, so it
just took it off.
There we go, uh, no, I mean myfirst, my first real networking
job was, uh, on the nmci right,the navy marine corps internet
talk about your crib, right.
Like it was very, veryregimented and I learned a
decent amount working in theknock.
But I was in the same boat thatyou were in.
Like I was like all right, I'mdone, like I've learned
(25:34):
everything there is to learn.
I can't touch anything thatdoesn't have 10 layers of
approval.
I can't author my own configs.
So when I had the chance to jumpto an enterprise that was where
I would do everything likesecurity, data center, collab
all of it and get to go all overthe world, I did it.
I jumped at it.
For me it wasn't a pay cut,though it wasn't.
(25:57):
It also wasn't.
It was also a huge risk,honestly, and I did it with a
wife and a kid at the time.
So you know that's dumb on me,but it paid off.
But like this was we?
Literally we moved to, theymoved us, they paid for this to
(26:22):
move because it was in likeidaho falls idaho, where they
had to, basically, you know, payfor people to come there.
So, but like I can't make thisup, a week after we landed there
and we'd moved and we're awayfrom all our family and friends,
uh, my wife finds out thatshe's pregnant with our second
daughter.
So it it was.
It was rough, right, but butthe point is the job though,
though, like I learned so muchthat's how I, that's how I ended
up at, eventually ended up atCisco was because I learned like
(26:42):
everything about everything,and I could not have probably
gotten that experience elsewhere, so it was still good Right.
Chris (26:48):
Yeah, I'd say another good reason to move is like as
you get more tenured and youlike you work with a lot of
technology, like kind of we weretalking about cloud and data
center like if you you reallyhave a love for cloud and you
start looking for opportunities,even like the jump I made and
the jump Chris just made.
They're not different fields,they're kind of adjacent, you
(27:09):
know.
You know, one thing that I'velearned as I've gotten older is
just, if I'm going to make jump,I don't like switching jobs.
Switching jobs is hard, it's apain.
Yeah, like all the paperwork,all the benefits, all the
different things, especiallylike if you did open enrollment
and then you switch jobs in likeMarch, like I've done twice oh
my god, it's like I have to doopen enrollment two times in a
(27:31):
row and I just want to cry likeit's not for the faint of heart,
but you.
one of the things that you oughtto do is you know in that
interview process, if you don'tknow, inner workings of the
company like evaluate thecompany, their tech stack and
you can usually get there byasking the right questions in
(27:57):
the interview you can get enoughdetails to where you can kind
of put the picture together of,like what is going on at this
company.
Like I like I've worked withJenkins before the CICD tool and
it's literally a Swiss armyknife.
It can do like anything.
But how custom do you want toget with all your stuff, you
know.
But after working with you knowat other places that use like
alternative platforms that kindof maybe took away some features
(28:20):
in favor of simplicity, likehey, that's something that is
kind of important to me at thetime.
I don't want to be a Jenkinsadministrator at that point.
Will (28:29):
I want to work on other.
Chris (28:30):
I want the CICD to kind of get out of my way and I will
trade in some features and someflexibilities for that if
necessary.
So you know work, you know lookat places where they're doing,
they're building somethingthat's important to you and
they're using tools and andtechnology stack that you want
to use.
Tim (28:49):
So don't just jump into anything blindly so this is
interesting because they're andthis might be a little bias on
our part or a little blindnesson our part, but like what I
hear a lot from people that arebrand new to the industry is
like I can't break in because Idon't know.
You know tool X.
I don't have experience withtool X or tool Y, so there's a
little bit of a chicken and eggproblem with leveraging that and
(29:13):
I don't know how to.
I don't know the right way torecommend getting around that,
you know but yeah, it's twothings like for one.
Chris (29:22):
It's easier today to learn stuff that it ever has
been, but it's also harder thanit ever has been to break into a
role.
Yes, yeah I think part of thatis market saturation and just
having so many people on themarket that are gunning for the
same jobs that's got to be partof it.
Tim (29:38):
Because it's so easy to learn.
You mean yeah, yeah and a lotof roles.
Chris (29:42):
I mean, one thing is everything used to that remote
work was like unheard of.
I mean, I don't even think halfof us didn't ever even use our
VPNs because like we would first, you know drive into the office
to do things.
Yeah, if you were only hiringand your talent pool is only
like a place.
Like you're tied down togeography hey, in that point.
Like the market is notsaturated with a ton of tech
(30:04):
workers, right, you're limitedto the talent pool in your city,
yeah, they'll relocate somefolks every once in a while but
hey, that's much easier to getyour foot in the door somewhere
and you don't have that.
That the culture, everything'sjust changed.
So where you might think it'seasier to work, you know the
remote work brings, but I thinkin some ways it's actually
harder to get a job with remotework because of the saturation
(30:26):
in the market yeah I thinkyou're with remote work of it,
like your talent pool is isobviously a little bit more
dispersed as well, right, right,so like there's stronger
competition, Competition, yeah,Across the board.
Will (30:40):
But like I mean, obviously I think tech in terms of a kind
of a career focus is currentlylike we probably thought a few
years ago it was at criticalmass, but it's at critical mass
again with AI, so like it justkeeps going right and I don't
know.
It's kind of hard to gaugewhether network engineering as a
(31:02):
career has expanded, stayed thesame or constricted.
What do you feel Will as far aswhat you've seen in the market?
Chris (31:10):
I feel like it's been watered down or diluted as far
as the impressions of whatnetworking I mean.
I guess we can always say thatit's always been that way to a
degree.
But I see, I feel like I seeand feel that a lot more lately,
and you see, things like withthe way that, like I don't want
to say that sassy's like thething that brought this on, but
(31:30):
this, the consolidation of howdifferent disciplines have been
mashed together.
Will (31:36):
You see like security and networking come together yeah,
exactly, tim.
Chris (31:40):
And so with that it's like, okay, I don't have a like
my what I used to have asecurity engineering team and a
network engineering team, andnow I just have network and
security engineering with twoless people so yeah, and with
less budget as well, usually,yeah, I'm seeing the growth of a
lot of teams.
Will (31:59):
Um, at least here in australia it's like like, kind
of some of the bigger banks thatare that are here and things
like that there's not.
There's not a dedicatednetworking team.
There's a secure networkingteam.
Where it's like oh yeah kind ofeverything falls into that
category.
Um, whereas obviously thingswere, were a little bit.
I mean, people that knewnetworking probably also knew
(32:20):
firewalls and things like that.
But security is such a broadercategory now we're talking about
like certificate management.
Tim (32:30):
Oh, there's a lot.
Will (32:30):
Yeah, so there's so much that goes into it.
That just has blown up.
But, like, even the networkingteam is not dedicated to just
networking most of the time,there has to be some secure
element in there.
Tim (32:42):
When I worked at the enterprise I was talking about I
mean literally, I wasn't jokingwe ran the call center
applications, so CUCM and allthat.
We built the data center, ofcourse.
We built the networking for theoffices.
We did all of the security, sofirewalling, just any securing
(33:03):
IPS, ids, all that crap.
And, yeah, all the servers, allthe identity stuff.
The sysadmins pretty much onlybuilt servers for the most part.
That was the thing.
Whatever applications were onthe servers, like Outlook and
the Microsoft suite and all that, that, they, you know, they
owned that.
But like I felt like we ownedlike way more, like you know,
(33:24):
and I don't think that's unusualfor an enterprise.
Will (33:26):
So what you're telling me is this is cyclical, is we?
We were at one point wherenetwork engineers had to know
everything and then they went tojust having to maintain
networking, and now we're backto them having to be t-shaped
right.
Tim (33:39):
I think some well, some places I feel like they never
stopped right, like depending onthe size of the enterprises you
were at, like I don't thinkthey ever stopped being
everything right, maybe just thejob listings have changed that
is true yeah, you're right aboutthe like like real security
engineering, like like networkengineers.
Chris (33:58):
if you've been traditionally a network engineer
, like, ok, are you, have youdealt with MTLS?
And OK, like actually MTLS, theway that this interaction
happens, you're, you'revalidating both sides.
It's not a TCP handshake, Ipromise you it's not.
I had this debate with somebodythe other day that was telling
me it was the same thing.
Tim (34:19):
I'm like bro bro they operate a different.
Chris (34:20):
Like what are we talking about here?
Application stack come on, man,you're like a route switch
expert.
Like what are you talking about?
You clearly never dealt withcertificates in mtls before.
Um, what's going on?
But two different things.
You know, like mtls is gonnabuild on your, your, your tcp
connection, you know, andthey're just two different
layers certificates, um, andthese things.
A lot of times, like in, atleast when I first started, I
(34:42):
had to do like cert replacementson like css load balancers and
then eventually, oh yeah I did aton of css or, uh, cert
replacements, but at that pointin my career I didn't understand
certs, I didn't understand certauthorities.
I didn't understand like I didthe work, I didn't understand
the principles behind thosethings until later in my career
(35:04):
and I think that's somethingthat a lot of um, some network
engineers did do those things orthey had to learn those things
to actually help out with cloudfolks that were kind of like
quasi full stack developers thatwere then tasked with managing
certs up in the cloud for, forvarious reasons.
So, like I, that's someone thatI talked to a while back.
(35:24):
That was like he was workingfor a company it wasn't a big,
big company, I think it kind oflike maybe considered mid-market
, I don't know smaller.
He was in this, in the throesof this kind of this same thing
where they had like a dedicatedlike his company.
They had like two securityfolks and one of them it was
like a single point of failurethat handled all the search, did
all these things had been withthe company for like ages and
(35:47):
then they started doing somecloud things and that person I
guess had joined like the introcall to discuss like cert
management and like loadbalancers in the cloud or
something or another, and thenended up leaving and going
somewhere else with like, not alike.
It wasn't even like a two weeksnotice, I don't know.
I think something happened andlike.
I don't know if there was a badrelationship or a fight or
(36:09):
whatever, but anyway he had tostep up to the plate and start
working on these things that hethought that he knew, because
he'd like rotated certs andinstalled certs and swapped
certs out.
He didn't really know how theyworked and so he had to do this
eat, breathe, learn certs, learnsocket layer stuff, learn more
about application layer, movingbeyond, like layer three and
(36:30):
layer four.
And then, like, looking back,it's like, oh he, that's the
best thing I ever did Learning.
You know, I really got in thesecurity world now and you know,
now he has a security job,which is kind of funny.
Will (36:42):
I think that's the tough part is usually when you're kind
of breaking in or you maybehave a entry level or kind of a
junior position, the like, your,your sole focus for a very long
time is just the how, it's notthe why, right, um, it's just
like, hey, like, we need thisdone.
You know you got this ticket,you need to do this.
(37:03):
So, like you're focusing on,like, what cli config to put in
to to get this done, or whathave you right?
And it's like, and I like forthe last like 10 years, I'm just
like, look, I don't, don't wantto see CLI, I don't give a shit
.
Tell me how this works Like, howlike or why you'd need this to
happen in the first place,because then I can draw a
logical path.
(37:24):
And then you know the config isjust something you look up,
right.
But it's like when you'reyounger or early on, it's like
you want to jump in, you want tobe able to do this stuff,
because it looks like you're inthe matrix, when you're in a
terminal console, right, but um,you know, it's uh, it's tough.
It's tough to to kind of pullback and and and look at the
early stages, cause that's notthe fun stuff.
Chris (37:45):
And like to your point how do you get a job?
No-transcript, I don't knowmuch about that trade per se,
(38:21):
but I don't know if that's theway it always works, but the way
that he made it, the way thathe told that story to me, like
made me think in my head likewe've, we've mucked this up, we
don't do this right.
Tim (38:32):
Like all right.
Chris (38:33):
No, we're just like throw you to the wolves, get your
CCNA, learn the command linesyntax.
And here's my productionnetwork.
Folks, have fun.
Tim (38:40):
Yeah, Right, Yep and no.
Chris (38:41):
by the way, there's no there's no like gate saying no,
(39:04):
we're going to make sure thatyou've sat under a practice
network engineer or somethinglike you've really learned it in
that way to really validateyour skills and teach you not to
take shortcuts.
Teach you how to learn theimportant things so that you can
grow, and doing that will helpyou grow quicker later on.
Tim (39:25):
So it's not even it's a shortcut in and of itself, if
you think about it yeah, we needapprenticeships, but it's funny
you're right that nobody doesit, and I think maybe it's yeah,
we need apprenticeships, butit's funny you're right that
nobody does it.
And I think maybe it's becauseit's not considered a trade,
because generally you seeapprenticeships with trades and
nothing else, or like I guessyou could consider a residency
for like a doctor would be kindof like an apprenticeship, but
like true apprenticeship likeyou're talking about, it is
(39:46):
pretty much just done withtrades.
Chris (39:58):
For whatever reason, we only do it with trades.
I think it's coming to a t,though, and I'll tell you why.
So we just mentioned two things.
Like I mentioned electric andyou mentioned um doctors.
Like if a doctor you know readshis quote-unquote ccna of
working on um, removing anappendix book and and like kill
somebody, that's not good.
And if I go and I I'm anelectrician, I read a book and I
burned someone's house down,like equally not good.
And I think with technology fora long time, like there's OK,
like technology didn't driveeverything.
(40:19):
Now technology is connected tothe things that are powering and
keeping humans alive.
And you know, it's just sointegrated with everything now
that it's OK.
If technology breaks, it's,it's a serious problem, and you
know serious problem Hospitalnetworks.
Exactly so hopefully it changes.
Will (40:37):
I'm just sitting here wondering how Will knows so many
tradesmen.
Man, I imagine you're just outhanging out with all your
buddies and they're all talkingabout hands-on tools and you're
just like yeah guys, I'm at mycomputer all day.
Chris (40:51):
So shout out to my hockey team, the Monarchs, I play ice
hockey, there you go, that'll doit.
I have a world like seriouslyworld renowned cardiologist
Vipple, who works over at NortonIncredible.
And I have two trade worker.
I actually have two doctors andthree, three trade workers just
on my one team.
(41:11):
You know Nice.
Three, three trade workers juston my one team.
You know, nice, it's so, it'sso funny that the things like a
sport in our, our adult liveswill bring but yeah, you're all
living out that dream.
Will (41:19):
You can, your bodies will still let you play hockey till
the day you die, right?
Tim (41:22):
so, man, I had to get I even beat up now I even had to
give up on indoor soccer.
I couldn't keep up, man, goodfor you.
Yeah, I'm losing it though I'mgonna.
Chris (41:31):
I I have like knee.
I don't want to say I have likeknee issues, but like my knees
they.
They sound like the fourth ofjuly when I go up the stairs.
I don't know what's going onlike I just had.
Will (41:40):
I had knee surgery like a year, a year and a half ago
because of softball.
Like literally nothing happened.
Just took a weird step and, yep, you need surgery after that.
That's how.
Chris (41:50):
That's how that's how the body works.
You don't recover quick either.
Like I hyperextended comingdown, I thought I was at the
last stair.
Tim (41:58):
Oh, I hate that.
I hate that when you overstepit.
Chris (42:03):
It messed me up for like a month, like it was so, and it
wasn't even that bad.
Yeah, it's just your body.
Will (42:13):
Like once you hit 35, 40, you start breaking down.
I guess I don't know.
Now I sneeze and my back hurts,which is great.
Tim (42:18):
Yeah, which one of you has the knee?
The trick knee for when itrains?
Will (42:23):
I broke my ankle when I was 19, and I still feel that
thing every time it rains.
It's quite weird, yeah.
Chris (42:31):
Yeah, I broke my ankle a few years ago playing hockey.
Actually, I blocked a shot in atournament and took a puck
right on the inner ball, theankle, and it like shattered the
end of it and like a bunch ofpieces.
It was disgusting don't worry.
Will (42:42):
Pretty soon you'll know when it's about to rain just by.
Chris (42:44):
Yeah, my kids are like making fun of me.
Like I'm on the couch, myfoot's huge, like dad your foot
looks like a balloon with thingssticking out of it.
Tim (42:53):
Yeah, isn't that great.
Will (42:57):
Ha, ha, ha, all right.
Well, yeah, I think we're aboutat time here, so let's go ahead
and wrap up for today.
So, thanks, will, for coming on, I guess.
Lastly, let's see, do you haveany parting thoughts for maybe
folks out there that areconsidering a transition?
Not that this, this current jobmarket, is the best time to be
(43:20):
making a transition, but, uh,you know it's.
It's not always the best time,you know, I think, when it
happens right, and that's kindof why changing jobs is so
difficult.
So I guess, in your opinion,what, uh, what kind of advice or
parting thoughts do you havefor those that are considering?
Chris (43:30):
So is a real thing.
It's here to stay, but don'tget lost in it.
Learn your.
Learn one thing, like whetherit's network engineering, like
applicate, like learn aprogramming language, but
actually learn the things.
Don't like let right the codeagents build everything for you.
Like actually learn it, becausethat is what's going to keep
(43:51):
you marketable in 2035, 2040.
Will (43:55):
You know, as you grow in your career learn.
Chris (43:56):
Take the time to learn something and don't rely on
augmenting your skills with theAIs.
Learn it.
Read the books, do the work,yeah.
Tim (44:05):
I mean, I'm doing the work.
Chris (44:06):
There is no shortcuts, even with AI.
Even with AI, if you give AI toa really smart, like a legend
visionary software developer,they could probably 10x and
produce more work quicker ifdone right.
But you just you can't takeshortcuts.
You've got to learn howdistributed systems are
distributed systems.
We're bound by geography andlots of things that aren't going
(44:28):
away anytime soon.
So learn one of these verticals.
That's all I got Don.
Learn one of these verticals.
Tim (44:33):
That's all I got.
Don't listen to William man,Just vibe code the shit out of
everything.
Chris (44:40):
I'm not saying you know what.
I actually startedexperimenting with this
quote-unquote vibe coding maybetwo weeks ago.
I started using Clod Code alittle bit just to explore see
what I could do yeah and allthat stuff and it's magical.
I wouldn't want to bet my wholecareer on what I was gonna say.
Tim (44:59):
What are you putting in a prod having vibe coded?
Will (45:01):
that yeah yeah, yeah, all right guys.
Well, with that, we'll uh,we'll uh say our goodbyes.
So thanks listening, especiallyif you made it to the end.
Please share this with a friend, subscribe, do all that crap,
whatever you want to do.
Tim (45:24):
Maybe unsubscribe, oh, and Will actually, before we do this
, will.
Do you have anything you wantto pimp, or you know, announce,
or you know where can peoplefind?
Chris (45:30):
you, yeah, so William-Collins on LinkedIn.
So the Cloud Gambit recentlygot picked up by Packet Pushers,
so we're subscribed to the newRSS feed and see us on the
Packet Pushers network and allthe Cloud Gambit social medias
that I had.
Since, you know, packet Pushersis doing the promotions and
(45:50):
they have their brand, I re.
You know what.
It's so hard finding a name forany social media handle now.
Will (45:55):
Everything's taken up.
Chris (45:56):
Everything.
I was like just trying to findsomething, you know.
So I changed all those socialhandles to macro engineered,
because that's what I feel likeI'm doing all the time, like
wide breadth of all the macrothings.
Tim (46:10):
I thought it was going to be Club Gander PP.
Will (46:18):
No, but that would have been pretty funny.
Yeah, it was probably just.
Everyone's probably just handlesquatting on, uh, on tiktok and
all that kind of stuff, um, so,yeah, all right.
Well, on my third attempt, wewill finally say goodbye and, uh
, we'll see you in a coupleweeks.
Goodbye, take care guys.
Tim (46:30):
We'll see you in a couple weeks.
Goodbye, Take care guys.
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