Career Paths Beyond Network Engineering: What’s Next?

Send us a text

Are you a network engineer wondering what’s next in your career? In this episode, we dive deep into various career paths beyond network engineering. From senior network engineer and architect roles to exciting vendor positions like technical marketing engineers (TMEs) and solutions engineers (SEs), discover how your networking skills can take your career to the next level. 

We cover the importance of certifications such as CCNP, CCDE, and cloud networking to keep your skills relevant in today’s tech landscape. Learn how to avoid burnout, the benefits of cross-functional communication, and how to position yourself for leadership roles like CTO or product management. Whether you're just starting out or looking to advance your career and make more money, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for every network engineer.

This podcast episode is perfect for networking professionals and tech enthusiasts seeking growth opportunities in the ever-evolving IT field!

Chapters
-------------------
00:00 Exploring Career Paths Beyond Network Engineering
11:11 Transitioning to Vendor Roles in Networking
14:32 Roles in Networking Beyond Engineering
21:04 Technical Enablement and Post-Sales Roles
33:40 Navigating Certifications and Vendor Roles
39:51 Navigating Career Paths Beyond Networking
52:22 Networking Career Opportunities and Certifications

Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
In this podcast, we exploretools, technologies and talented
people.
We aim to bring you informationthat will expand your skill
sets and toolbox and share thestories of fellow network

(00:21):
engineers.
Welcome to the Art of NetworkEngineering.
I am AJ Murray and I am joinedby Andy Laptev.
Andy, how are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey, aj, good, I'm fantastic.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Or should I say Andy the Metallica, guy Laptev.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, I got new nicknames.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yay, new moniker.
I like it.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Thank you.
The kids head off to school.
I'm down the shore.
We were at the beach today.
It was lovely.
How are you?
How's Vermont?
How are the leaves?

Speaker 1 (00:46):
They're turning beautiful colors here.
I'm rather enjoying it.
I'm taking tomorrow off fromwork and I'm going to go shoot
some bangers of the foliage uphere.
I'm very excited.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Do they know you're taking off work to go take
pictures?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Nope, I'm just going to pretend.
No, I'm just kidding.
Yes, they do.
I talk to my boss.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I have some really important thing going on, boss,
something big's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I'm just going to put myself in a meeting and I'm
going to leave.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
That's really cool.
I've seen some of your pictures.
I mean it's just beautiful upwhere you're at.
Do you have to go far from home, or is that close by?
There's really pretty pictures,I see.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
It's relative, right Like.
So I think tomorrow morningwe're going to head to Peach and
Vermont.
There's like a really classicscene I took it last year and
posted it online of like achurch and a barn and a
cornfield and some mountains andsunrise.
That's about an hour plus awayfrom here, but we want to get
there before the sun comes up sowe can get out into the field,

(01:43):
set up our tripods, all thatgood stuff.
So I got to leave at like fouro'clock tomorrow morning, so
it's going to be a tripods.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
You cheaters, you know you know that's the right
way to do it.
Yeah, awesome man.
I can't wait to see him.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, yeah, I'll try to post them as soon as possible
, but that no.
Tonight we're talking about ITcareer paths beyond network
engineer, beyond.
So you know, let's set thestage a little bit Like we're
normally talking to, you know,entry-level people trying to

(02:18):
break in.
That's been a lot of our thingover the past couple of years.
But you did it, you made it.
You're a network engineer,you've been a network engineer
for a few years, but now what dowe do?
So tonight we're talking aboutcareer paths beyond network
engineering and there's just Ithink there's a lot out there.
I think there's a lot more outthere than people realize.
For network engineers, I thinknetworking is really the

(02:41):
foundation for a lot ofdifferent possibilities.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, totally.
And you know, there's not tosay that you can't just stay in
network engineering for decadesand have a fulfilling career too
.
But it's funny how many peoplewe've met that have started as
network engineers and then, youknow, pivoted to other roles.
We have very transferable skillsets, I think, especially if

(03:06):
you can communicate.
If you're a networking personwith technical acumen who can
communicate, that really opensup a lot of doors in a lot of
places.
I mean even the people on theshow, right, what do we have?
One network engineer leftworking in prod.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, sadly no two Kevin and Dan.
Oh yeah, no, that's true, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
So where should we start here?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So I mean, let's pick off the obvious right.
Like you know, if you're anetwork engineer today, the next
, I think obvious step would bea senior network engineer or
kind of an architect, and that'sabout it, End of show.
No, I'm just kidding.
So yeah, I mean, if you want tostay where you're at and
there's room for growth, youcould become a senior network

(03:47):
engineer.
I mean, you could also step toanother company and become a
senior network engineer.
So what's the kind ofdelineation between a network
engineer versus a senior networkengineer?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Doesn't it kind of depend on where you are?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, I think so.
I think if you have really goodtroubleshooting skills and a
solid ability to troubleshoot,if you have knowledge of the
network and if you're involvedin a little bit of the design
and more of the deployment kindof side of things, those tend to
be more senior level skills,right, like if you're involved

(04:26):
in core switch upgrades andmajor projects, kind of like
that, those tend to be the moresenior skill reserved things.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
And it's funny, where I worked I was a WAN, primarily
running the WAN for a few datacenters, and I got promoted to
senior but never touched thecore Again, because it depends
on where you are.
I knew everything there was toknow about the WAN and I could
troubleshoot it and we torestuff down and rebuilt it then
end-of-life replacements and allthat stuff.

(04:56):
But you tell me you've got todo a course, switch, upgrade.
I'm like yo, that's Bob.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I guess that's a very valid point.
When I think of senior networkengineer, it's usually like jack
of all trades, master ofnothing.
They're doing the LAN, they'redoing the WAN, they're doing the
core, they're doing the edge,they're doing everything.
But where you were, therewasn't just one or two network
engineers, there was a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, the size and scale right.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, you specifically were focused on the
win, so I I guess, like that'sa good way to put it like if, if
you're a master of your domain,it's it's probably time for you
to be a senior yeah, and it'sprobably just skill set and
experience, though like to notto try to say big is is
different than little shops.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
But if I think you're the expert in your domain and
you know what you're doing, ifpeople come to you, if if you're
training the new people, ifyou're running the big projects
right, that's a good indication.
You'll be senior and it comeswith some more money, which is
nice I would have liked.
I had really good relationshipswith the architects at that
place and I saw myself goingthat route.
I was studying under them andalways picking their brains and

(06:01):
I was planning on becoming anarchitect someday at that place.
And then a vendor arrived.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Isn't it funny, how that happens.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Network architect, I think takes it to the next level
.
Right, if you're an architect,you're more forward thinking
than you are tactical.
Right, you're thinking aboutwhat are some future things that
you could bring in to helpfacilitate whatever the business
is doing.
You're doing a lot more of thedesigning and planning of the
implementation and then you'rehanding off those things to the

(06:35):
senior network engineers and thenetwork engineers to execute on
that stuff.
The network engineers and thesenior network engineers
typically worry more about theday-to-day and taking care of
and maintaining, whereas thearchitect is more about the
planning and the long-term and,like I said, the
forward-thinking stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
And, in addition to that, when the building is
burning down and none of us canfigure out why, we wake up the
architect.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
After all the possible troubleshooting is done
and we can't troubleshootanymore, we call in the
architect.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Somebody call Carl, I'll get tack on the line.
Get everybody on.
We have no idea what'shappening.
It's bad.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
And now again, if you're a network engineer and
you're aspiring to be one ofthose senior positions, some
things to consider and thinkabout Certifications.
If you want to be a senior,you're probably looking at some
sort of CCNP, maybe additionalskill sets to help round out
whatever it is that you mighthave in-house.

(07:36):
So if you're doing a lot ofautomation, you might choose to
do some DevNet stuff.
If you're working a lot withthe cloud, then you might go
with some sort of AWS or Azureor GCP, networking-related
certification, somethingadjacent like that.
If you're doing an architect,then you might be looking more
at the design side, right?
So maybe the CCDE, maybe theCCNP.

(07:57):
Design certification is enough.
Depends on where you work andwho you're working for, kind of
thing, but there's certainlylots of stuff out there.
If you're more security focused, maybe you're looking at Palo
Alto or you know, maybe the CCNPsecurity or Fortinet or you
know whatever, right, whateveryou're using where you're at.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, there's all those adjacent technologies.
Right, like you said, security,you can become a firewall
expert Cloud right, cloud.
Have you heard of cloudtechnologies?
Right, like you said, security,you can become a firewall
expert cloud right cloud.
Have you heard of cloud?
It's getting big automation acouple times, yeah yeah, but
again taking those foundationalnetworking skills, cyber
security, right like you canpivot into so many adjacent
roles which, um cyber, seems allthe rage right.

(08:41):
That's like the sexy role rightnow right isn't that what
everybody wants to be in.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
I want to be in cyber Network automation engineer,
devops engineer those are hugeright now.
It's really interesting to seethe growth of that.
I don't know part of networkengineering A few years ago.
Everyone's talking about, oh,you've got to learn Python,
you've got to do that.
And it's like, well, I learnedPython.
But everyone's talking about,oh, you've got to learn Python,
you've got to do that.

(09:07):
And it's like, well, I learnedPython, but I don't know how to
apply it to network engineering.
And so now here we are, 10 plusyears later, after the whole
push to get to Python andautomating networks, and it's
established.
So now it's not just networkengineers with automation skills
.
There's dedicated networkautomation engineer positions
out there that are availablethat you can certainly move into
.
I think another big one is sitereliability engineer.

(09:30):
I've heard that one tossedaround quite a bit.
That's usually more about kindof disaster recovery planning.
How are we going to gracefullymigrate services from one site
to another?
Are data centers active-active,active-passive?
How's that failover going tokind of work?
So that's certainly a positionthat you could grow into and

(09:52):
seek to move from networkengineer.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
And I guess there's management too.
Right, you could move up to apeople manager.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, yep.
So I guess, do you want tomanage people or do you want to
be technical?

Speaker 2 (10:06):
yeah, I'll tell you that right.
So I guess that's a fork in theroad, right like if you're going
to go into management you mightbe less technical, and I will
tell you that my boss, eric, atmy fintech role, was the most
technical manager I've ever hadlike he.
He was like architect levelskills, I think when he went
into management and I had methim, I think when he was had

(10:28):
been management for a while, butany conversation we had he was
right in there in the, you know,in the grind and the meat of it
, talking and problems and stuff.
So, but if you don't use it,you lose it, usually right, like
the longer you're in management.
Um, so I I don't know how youdon.
I mean it even happened to meand we'll probably talk about
another time on another episodebut you stop studying, you get

(10:49):
out of engineering, you pivot tosomething else.
I'd say a year I was just Iforgot everything.
I'm like wait, what you know?
I'm trying to haveconversations with people about
networking.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
I'm like I forget all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Well, yeah, you know.
So I don't know how Eric stayedcrisp in the technical side
because he had seemed to be awayfrom it for a while.
So I've seen it.
Done is the point of thisrambling.
But I think it's hard, ifyou're not in it on the daily to
try to not forget it all.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Sure, I think that is maybe atypical.
If you're a manager you tendnot to have.
I guess it depends on the sizeof the organization and
everything else but if you're amanager you tend not to be in
the day-to-day nitty gritty noton the console, not, you know,
doing the network engineering.
You're managing those peopleand I think that if you spend

(11:39):
too much time still down at thatlevel, then you might be doing
your team a disservice if you'renot doing the leadership thing,
because I think a really bigrole as a manager is to provide
air cover to your team.
Everyone's busy doing projectsand everybody wants something
from your team and you have tohave all of those people come to
you so you can triage thoserequests, validate, prioritize

(12:04):
and then assign accordingly.
And if you're not doing that,then all of those requests are
probably going directly topeople that work for you and
that just makes their job harder.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Wouldn't it be cool if there were roles out there
that somebody called you one dayand said hey, aj, how many
maintenance windows did you workthis year and how often were
you on call?
And when you were on call, howoften did you get woken up out
of bed, aj?
And you have that kind ofconversation and then they go
huh, how would you, aj Murray,like to make significantly more

(12:36):
than you're making in productionwith no maintenance windows and
no on call?
How would you like that, aj?
So these are the kind of rolesthat get me excited these days.
I don't want to call themvendor roles, right, but, um,
when I my mind was blown I don'tknow if it was when we met um
pete and those guys when we didthe tme episode, but there was a
point in our show's arc wherewe started, I started to learn

(13:00):
about these vendor roles, kindof like what we're talking about
beyond.
You know, senior network andnetwork architect and people
manager and DevOps and cyber tolike oh wait, our skill set
could be valuable to vendors innetworking and networking
adjacent companies, like huh,like that blew my mind and I
still think it's pretty rad.
You know, right now I'minterviewing with a few of them

(13:22):
and just the impact I explained.
I Now I'm interviewing with afew of them and just the impact.
I had an interview earlier todayand somebody asked me why I
wanted to work there and it kindof just came to me.
It was very clear.
But when you're at a company,you can impact that company and
what you're doing there and thecustomers.
If you pop up and you work at avendor, you can kind of impact
the industry right, depending onwhat you're doing there, your

(13:44):
impact is much bigger.
It's not just one company, youcan impact all the companies if
you have a great solution, sure,right, sure.
So I really like the ability tohave a larger impact, I think
in a grander sphere, at a vendor.
What do you think the mostcommon like?
Do you think it's an SE?
Like I know in our communityfolks who have gone to vendors?
Do you think most people jumpover to the SE role as a first?

Speaker 1 (14:07):
stop.
I think that's pretty common,right?
You might be doing SE, tam, soTechnical Account Manager,
there's like customer success,professional services, those are
all kind of adjacent roles, butyou'll find those at OEMs and
you'll find them at partners andstuff like that too.
So I think it takes a specialkind of skill set right.

(14:32):
Very typically, it people tendto be introverted and not very
social, not really good athaving the conversations.
They're very good at thetechnical part, but then maybe
not good at the soft skillsquote, unquote kind of thing.
But if you have that man, thatthat puts you in a good spot.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
And people keep telling me it's rare to find
someone technical who has thesoft skills quote, unquote, I
hate to call them soft skills,but the ability to communicate,
the ability to influence people.
Do we want to go through andkind of define each of these
roles like could there be peoplewatching this show who are like
what the heck's an sc?
What are they talking about?
I don't know how deep we wantto go into any of this, I mean

(15:12):
yeah, yeah, I mean absolutely Imean, it's pre-sales, right?
isn't that what they call it?
So how does it work?
A company needs somethingyou're doing like a refresh, I
guess, and they'll have you knowtheir se.
So it's a solutions engineer,right?
You're on a pre-sales team.
You're, you're matched up with,I guess, an account manager who
is like the salesperson, right?

Speaker 1 (15:30):
yeah, yeah, so se it could be solutions engineer,
sales engineer, systems engineerit's been called a bunch of
different things.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Solutions architect yeah, there's like three to five
, yeah, titles depending on thecompany.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, but but you're right.
You know, usually you have atrusted vendor or multiple
trusted vendors.
Maybe you buy your networkinggear from one partner, you might
buy your compute from adifferent partner, whatever, and
you go to the account managerand you say I'm looking for X
solution.
Maybe it's firewalls, maybeit's a core switch, maybe it's a
new stack of switches foraccess layer, it doesn't matter.

(16:06):
You tell them what you'relooking for and they'll bring in
a sales engineer and the salesengineer will usually give you
the 5,000 foot view of here'ssome possibilities.
And then, if there's specifictechnologies or specific
hardware lines that you'reinterested in, they might pull
in somebody else's specialist togo a little bit deeper on

(16:26):
specific solutions yeah and andthe comp is pretty good from
what I hear.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
So, like alexis, she's always kind of I think
she's the one who said like youknow, I'm just your friendly
neighborhood se, right, she'skind of like your trusted and se
is your trusted advisor,someone you can go to with
questions.
And I think I don't want to saythe wrong thing here, but the
AM is the salesperson.
I think that the SE's integrityis the most important thing for

(16:50):
them.
They can't lose the trust ofthe customer.
So when you're talking to yourSE, they're not lying to you to
try to get you to buy the thing.
They're actually like hey, I'man engineer too and I've been
working with this technology forsix months.
I can walk you through it.
I can show you a lab.
We and I've been working withthis technology for six months.
I can walk you through it.
I can show you a lab.
We can get our hands dirty init.
So it's kind of engineer toengineer.
You're a technical person thatcan communicate, you can do

(17:10):
demos and I think you're like atrusted resource.
When I was talking to Tim, Ithink one of his clients is his
old company and he'll sit thereone day a week and he's just
there.
If anybody needs anything, ifthere's any problems, if anybody
has any questions, go talk tothe SE in the conference room,
which is fantastic you have avendor rep sitting at your
building once a week.

(17:31):
I'm sure that's a huge resource.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
I will add that to get that kind of resource, you
probably need to be spending alot of money.
Not just anybody's going tohave an SE available to them.
That's upper tier of spend.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
What you're spending right, absolutely.
There's an account manager.
They're the salespeople.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
So there's an account manager and then there's a
technical account manager.
They sound very similar.
There's a fine line.
There is a difference betweenthe two, but obviously technical
account managers are typicallymore technical than salesy.
So they're helping you makesure that you're utilizing your
purchase to the absolute most,because the more that you use it

(18:18):
, the more that you rely on it.
Chances are you're going torenew your subscriptions, you're
going to buy more licenses,you're going to buy the bolt-ons
that help enhance the productor solution and get more out of
it.
So it's more about thatadoption after the fact.
And if you're buying across theportfolio, then they're going

(18:38):
to make sure that you're havingsuccess across the portfolio.
So if you're having troublewith, say, data center products
or wireless products or whatever, they can help pull in
specialists to help you havemore successful deployments and
figure out those issues.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
And it just jumped in my head because we had a TME
episode the technical marketingengineers.
That's another role at a vendorwe've had some friends on.
They're like generally verytechnical people.
They do a lot of.
I think they help sales, likesales enablement stuff, so
they're.
I think they're like you know,helping write documentation and
you know they're in the lab.

(19:12):
So like where I've worked, youknow there might be an
escalation and something weird'shappening, so like the TMEs are
like in the lab grinding it out, trying to help.
You know support everybody inan escalation or things like
that.
So they have marketing in theirtitle.
But the TMEs I've known arevery, very technical.
So that's another cool role ata vendor.

(19:33):
Probably didn't explain it wellbecause I don't understand the
role that well and we spent anhour with two TMEs on the show,
but I don't know if you have abetter explanation of it.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
No, I mean TME is usually like a technical
evangelist, right?
Like you're helping.
You know, you're the peoplepresenting on networking field
days and you're out thereproducing white papers and blogs
and other sorts of content tohelp make sure there's adoption
of product and people, you know,piquing their interest, right
Like?
I've heard of this but I'm notreally sure what I can do with

(20:03):
it.
Oh well, here's what you can dowith it.
Here's how that can help you.
Another position that I'm init's called technical enablement
.
I rather enjoy it, so I helpcreate content that our sales
engineers and other salesmembers use to learn our
products, so that way they canturn around and demo them to our

(20:25):
customers and prospects.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
What does that content look like?
Is it like videos or demos labs?

Speaker 1 (20:31):
It's a lot of labs and a lot of like kind of
scripted demos.
And something else I've beengetting into a lot lately is
like click through, so it'ssomething that the SEs can use
to learn to do a demo themselves.
Or it's literally somethingthat they can leave behind with
the customer Like hey, here,check this out.
And it's just walking throughhow to set something up and why

(20:54):
this is important in theworkflow.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
And what's the title again, what's your title?

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Mine is Architect, but it's part of the Technical
Enablement team.
Technical Enablement right partof the technical enablement
team.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Technical enablement right Like.
When I hear enablement, I thinksales right Like sales
enablement.
So you're providing materialsto the sales teams to help them
understand the value, props andthe features and then how to
explain them to okay.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, and then another part of my position is
it's kind of infrastructure,because we're maintaining things
that allow our demo environmentto run.
So we have virtual environmentsthat generate traffic, that
send data into the demoenvironment to make it look like
something real is happening.
And some of it is typical worktraffic right, like stuff going

(21:40):
to Salesforce and Office 365 andother places like that, and
sometimes we have to createtraffic that looks like
something that a customer mighthave.
So maybe it's OT, maybe it'ssecurity cameras, maybe it's
medical devices.
But we want to try to, as muchas we can, replicate what a
customer environment will looklike, so that way that data

(22:02):
looks like it should.
So when a customer that's in amedical environment logs into it
, it's like oh yeah, yeah, I usethose systems.
That's totally what I do.
I see that they have thatconnection.
So just today I had to set uplike an OT demo server and a
client so that way they couldlog into the client via our
services and see all the OTdashboards and everything like

(22:25):
that.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Remind everybody what OT is.
It's IT, except it's different.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
It's like outside technology, right?
Yeah, it's like all of yoursecurity cameras, maintenance
thermostats, furnaces, all thatgood stuff.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
And there's so much overlap.
You were talking aboutevangelism and creating content,
and so there's also likeproduct marketing roles, right?

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Which you're familiar with.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, right, so it's again some overlap with the TME
stuff you know data sheets,brochures, videos, blogs,
podcasts, evangelism, so,depending on what company you're
in, but you know, if so, I loveto communicate, I love the
technical, but I also love to beable to explain, maybe in a
story, how things are working toengage people, to get them

(23:15):
talking about it, to get theminterested.
And product marketing is isanother way, you know, to do
that a little.
I don't want to say lesstechnical than TMEs, but the
TMEs I've met super technical,where they have a technical
background, but I thinkcommunication is their main
strength, whereas I think theTMEs are a little more technical

(23:38):
.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
I think if you can take that like any sort of
technical topic and I don't wantto say dumb it down, but if you
can explain something highlytechnical to a non-technical
audience, right, like you know,even if it is a technical
audience, like they're not goingto understand what a particular
solution is.
So if you can take that andexplain it to them, get them
hooked, reel them in.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, and it's a real problem to solve too, because
you're speaking to multipleaudiences.
You might if you have asolution or a product, for you
know the networking industry.
You have to win the hearts andminds of the people that are
going to like, install, maintainand troubleshoot this thing in
production.
So you're going to have acertain, you know, dialogue with
them and communication, butthen you also have to

(24:22):
communicate with the people whoare going to sign the purchase
orders.
You know the CTOs, or theleadership, which might be
slightly different.
You know communications and wordtracks are going to be there
you know, they're going to beinterested in cost savings, as
opposed to the operators whodon't want to be woken up in the
middle of the night.
So I think it's fun to talkabout a solution to multiple

(24:44):
audiences, because people havedifferent pain points that you
have to talk to.
What else do we have here?
Product management.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
I've always been a fan of post sales.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
It's what is it?

Speaker 1 (24:58):
It's less glamorous than than sales engineer.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
That's your deployment.
You're deploying the solution,yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, so so post sales has always been fun.
So you have a sales engineerthat usually does like the entry
level, okay, and sometimes it'sone in the same, sometimes it's
different, it depends on theorganization.
But you'll have a salesengineer that knows a baseline,
a little bit about everything,and then they'll pull in the
people that know more aboutspecific things.
And then, when it comes time tobuy a particular solution, you

(25:29):
might have an architect thattries to understand what the
current customer's environmentlooks like.
And then, okay, how are wegoing to take the solution and
get it into the customer'senvironment?
Once that is designed, it'susually converted into a
statement of work.
Here's how we're going to do it, here's exactly the parts we
need to accomplish this and hereare the hours that we're going

(25:53):
to need to build this out anddeploy.
And then that SOW, thatstatement of work, is a
prescription that gets handedover to the post sales team, and
the post sales team generallybehind the scenes, will review
this in tandem with thearchitects and kind of approve
or not approve how this is goingto work, kind of approve or not

(26:13):
approve how this is going towork.
And then we get to do the nittygritty.
Usually the design that's doneby the sales team is more of a
high level, and we get to do thelow level design.
We get to go a little bitdeeper and talk exactly what
protocols we're going to use,how are we going to secure them,
all those fun nitty grittydetails.
And then we get to do theexecution of that.

(26:34):
We do the configuration ofdevices.
We stage them, upgrade them tovarious versions of code,
whatever is decided we're goingto deploy, and then we get to do
the deployment.
So, even though it's not on thecustomer side, we're still
right there with the customerand we're doing the cutovers,
we're on the calls with TAC,we're doing all that stuff.
But it's nice in that you'renot just working in one

(26:59):
environment.
You see a bunch of differentenvironments, so you get a lot
more experience.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
That's nice and you don't get bored.
It's always different.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Right Always something new.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
You did that for a long time right.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, I did post sales for over five years.
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
It was a lot of fun.
I really liked working with thecustomers and establishing that
rapport, building that trust,because it became like this
trusted advisor kind of thing,right, like you could do it that
way.
But now that I know this aboutyour network, there's a better
way to do that.
We don't want to create moreproblems in the process

(27:37):
Sometimes.
This about your network there'sa better way to do that.
We don't want to create moreproblems in the process,
sometimes the late nights arealways fun.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
A lot of windows.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
A lot of windows and then, depending on it, really
depends on the company you workfor.
So I work for one company.
If you're doing the deployment,it doesn't matter that you're
up late at night.
You're up early the nextmorning because you got to do
support.
But then I've worked for othercompanies where like, okay,
you're doing the deployment,we're going to bring in another
engineer to do the support soyou can get some sleep.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Sounds like a role you could burn out if it's not
set up right.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, that's 100% true.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
There was a time in my career where I worked so many
maintenance windows over thecourse of a couple of years I
just I started to dislike thewhole role, right, Like it's,
just it's just a grind.
You're like why is my wholelife being up at night Beep
booping keyboard?

Speaker 1 (28:24):
you know why do I do this.
It sounded fun in the beginning.
It's not so fun now.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, I mean, this was better than climbing ladders
being a cable guy.
But oh my God, what's happening.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
I yeah, I mean this was better than climbing ladders
being a cable guy, but oh myGod, what's happening?
I will say if you're going todo professional services and I'm
speaking from experience it isvery certification heavy.
If you're going to work for apartner particularly in
post-sales, I think, anyposition at a partner the OEMs
require the partners to maintaina certain number of certified
personnel at various levels.
Right, so many experts, so manyprofessionals.

(28:57):
I don't think there's anyminimum on associate level
things.
But you're you're going to bechasing paper for sure In a
position like that.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
And you have more certs than anybody I know, AJ
Murray.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
They're they're expired.
I actually, I actually just gotemails the other day, I believe
now all of my Juniper certsthat I got so many years ago
when we started this podcast.
They're gone, they're done Doyou think it matters.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
That's not what we're talking about here, but just a
really quick aside.
I mean, once you get the certfor me, if I'm interviewing you
and I'm looking at you on paperand I see all the certs you have
, I'd be a tool if I'm like well, these are expired, mr Murray.
Now you no longer have thisknowledge Like.
It shows me what a dedicated,diligent you know studying, and

(29:45):
I'm just amazed at how manycerts you got at that job.
Do you think they lose theircredibility when they're expired
Like for me?
They don't, because I know youlearn the stuff.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
But I didn't maintain it right.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
That's what I mean, do you think it's that big of a
deal that they're not maintained?

Speaker 1 (30:02):
So when I say I didn't maintain it, I did not
maintain the knowledge.
Sure, If you were to ask me togo do something like, I got
automation-relatedcertifications for Juniper.
I got service provider-levelcertifications on Juniper.
I could not tell you now how todo anything service

(30:22):
provider-related on a Juniperrouter.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
I wouldn't say that's your fault.
They weren't deploying thatstuff, so you weren't working on
it, right.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Sure, but I guess if I were interviewing for a job
for a Juniper service provideror a service provider that
deploys Juniper, I'm probablynot going to pass any sort of
technical interview when they'regoing to ask me questions about
well, how do you deploy MPLS ona Juniper router?

Speaker 2 (30:51):
No right, that's true .
But when I see people with,like I don't know, 29 certs like
you or however many you have, Ijust find it very impressive.
Like to me it's almost asimpressive as having an ie
number, because I know what theywent through or I've heard what
they went through like get thatnumber, and I know how hard the
na was for me and I'm workingon my ccmp now and it's not easy

(31:12):
and a ton of work.
So when I see somebody like youwho just has this laundry list,
I'm like wow, how did they dothat?
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
It was COVID and after the initial influx of help
us work remote and when we kindof like achieve that right,
there was this steep dive on theback end and there was a period
of time where we didn't have alot to do.
So it was like okay, if you'renot working on anything actively

(31:42):
, then go chase the paper right.
And it's like okay.
Well, I don't want anyone toaccuse me of not doing my work
from home or doing my work whileI work from home, kind of thing
.
So I spent entire days studyingfor certifications.
I didn't have to study at nightbecause I spent so much time
during the day studying forthese certs.
I'm confident if anybody elsehad that ability, they probably

(32:07):
could have done the samecertifications in the same
amount of time that I did.
It's not like I don't feel likeI did anything superhuman there
.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
We got a couple of good comments in the same amount
of time that I did.
It's not like I don't feel likeI did anything superhuman there
.
We got a couple of goodcomments in the chat, so Dan has
a really good point.
He said he thinks it matters ifthat's the sole focus of your
job, right, like if you're ajuniper.
I see you're going to needcurrent juniper, so that makes a
lot of sense.
Peter Hunt asked a goodquestion.
Do those companies gaindiscounts from having employees
with certifications?
That's like partner level stuff, right?
I never understood how thatworked.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
So there are different tiers of partnership,
right?
Like it might be bronze, silver, gold or platinum or whatever.
It's different for every vendor.
So in order to obtain that tier, you need to have so many
certified people of eitherexpert level or professional
level.
Or maybe they need to have somany certified people of either
expert level or professionallevel, or maybe they need to

(32:56):
have um, you know specific uh, Idon't know specialist ones,
right?
Like, if you want to have somesort of collaboration uh tag
associated with your company,then you have to have so many
people that are collaboration,expert level certified, Right?

Speaker 2 (33:12):
And why do you care about the levels?
If you're gold, do you get abetter discount on gear than?

Speaker 1 (33:17):
like a bronze.
Is that why they're chased?

Speaker 2 (33:18):
okay, yeah it's just is that?
Is that basically why thesecompanies chase paper to?

Speaker 1 (33:23):
get that's one of the benefits right like and then
you get literally a tighterpartnership with the oem, like
you get access to the businessunit, you get closer or faster
access to technical support.
You know that, that kind ofstuff.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, more tighter alignment, which will probably
get you a better Do they?
Last question I know I'm takingthis down a rabbit hole.
So if they get, if they're goldinstead of bronze, and they get
a better discount on gear, doesthat get passed on to the
customers or is that just go tothe margin of the?
I mean, who knows right?

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Dep, the margin of the I mean, who knows right
Depends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, itreally depends.
Sure, okay, there's more marginthere, and whether or not that
discount is passed on to thecustomer, it's up to the partner
, right?

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, it might be or it might not be, I don't know
yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
I would even say that it's circumstantial.
One partner might use thatdiscount to be more competitive
in a deal and then on the verynext deal, they might say well,
we're going to keep them for us.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, we beat post-sales to death.
But before I forget one thing,Mansoor just jumped in my brain
for some reason.
So Mansoor, who was on our shownetwork engineer for a long
time, super bright guy, and thenhe wound up at TAC.
He's working in, I believe,Cisco TAC on some big accounts I
think I want to say Google andAT&T, I forget, but again

(34:38):
another vendor role that you cango to and he's still in the
tech.
He loves the technical and he'sgetting to dive into a lot of
cool stuff and he's really happythere too.
So TAC is definitely anotherpath.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
What else?
We got a couple of good, uh,additional comments.
So so william said, uh, thathis jncip expires next month.
Uh, and, and they've rarelyused it, um, over the last
couple of years, so they they'rethinking about letting it just
lapse, right like, and I I'd saythat's that's valid, right like
if, if you haven't touched it,you're not familiar with it, it

(35:13):
doesn't like come to you like itused to.
There's a certain amount ofeffort you're going to have to
put into study and prepare forthe exam again If you're not
currently actively working forit.
Is it, is it worth it to topursue something like that?
You know, maybe if you'reworking with a different vendor
today, it might be morelucrative to, you know, study

(35:33):
for for those certifications andtrying to renew something that
you're not really using.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
I guess the target's always moving right, like you
might be a Cisco shop and thenthey might bring in some other
vendor and then you'remulti-vendor and then you have
to maintain them both.
And yeah, I guess it's just andto stay as relevant in the
industry.
And again, now we're completelyoff topic of the show, but I
think it's interesting.
You know, do you get in a pointin your experience where certs
mean less, right, I don't know.

(35:59):
But is paper more?
I mean, obviously, in postsales you need it for partner
levels.
You know, if you have 10, 15,20 years product experience and
engineering, are people lookingat your certifications?
Maybe they are, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
It depends on the organization On the customer
side too, if you want to havecertain support levels, they are
required to maintain certifiedpeople too.
I know that was the case forVMware, right?
If you wanted VMware's platinumlevel support contract this was
before the Broadcom acquisition, by the way.
I have no idea what it lookslike today.

(36:32):
Yeah sure, the Broadcomacquisition, by the way, I have
no idea what it looks like today, but if you wanted to have that
level of support, then you needto have VMware certified
professionals on staff.
I've never heard of thatrequirement for a networking
specific vendor.
There's also the financialaspect, too, right?
So somebody else mentioned inthe chat I use a vendor every
single day.

(36:54):
I just chose not to because Ididn't want to put in the time
to study and I didn't want topay for it financially.
Right Like, it's expensive.
You know, I one of one of thethings, one of the benefits of
working for the partner, isbecause they needed the certs,
they were willing to pay for it,right Like?
I can't tell you how many examsI failed, that they paid for,
that I didn't have to pay out ofmy own pocket.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
I don't know if this one counts, but I know and I
don't know I don't have LinkedInup in front of me and I forget.
But so, like Duan is an example, lightfoot Is he like dev role,
like developer relations?

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yeah, so he's a senior developer advocate and
that's kind of like a TME.
So the developer advocate role,I think, is something
relatively new that's come outright Because of like a TME.
So the developer advocate role,I think, is something
relatively new that's come outright Because we have a lot more

(37:44):
network automation SDKs andthings that different companies
are making to help with thatautomation journey right.
So again, if there's somebodythat can help people like us
adopt those technologies, thoseSDKs, those tools, then that's
just going to make sure that wefurther invest in those products
and spend money with them.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Right, because I know there's a couple of those folks
that have gone from networkengineering and then I remember
how did you get into development?
Aren't you a network?
Now you're in developer land.
What happened?
But the way you just framed itmakes perfect sense.
If you're looking at automationplatforms, you're going to need
people teaching you that rightand showing you how to do it
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Another good point with the partners is usually the
partners have labs that folkscan use to study for
certification.
So with the CCIE today there'sportions about SD-WAN and DNA
Center, or Catalyst Center, whatthey call it.
Today that's not something thatyou can just go, you know, buy
off eBay and set up in your lab.

(38:40):
Right.
It's really, you know, somegear you can buy and put in your
lab.
That's not one of them.
So they have access to be ableto put up these labs and, you
know, people can use thatequipment to study for these
various certifications.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Peter Hunt asked a question and we should probably
get to some more.
Did we hit them all?

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Well, let's go back in a second.
There's a lot the chat's busytonight.
I love it.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, yeah, peter said, andy, what was the biggest
challenge working as anengineer at a service provider?
So I guess he's talking aboutwhen I was working at the NOC
Just the complexity, I think,layer upon layer of stuff, that
when a customer's stuff isn'tworking and you have to find
their MPLS instance, and thenthe VRF thing and then over here
it was so complex and soconfusing and the network was

(39:28):
just so bonkers, you know, likeit's overlay on top of overlay
on top of overlay and all thistechnology that just magically
somehow somebody figured out howto get all work together.
I think it's just thecomplexity of a service provider
environment.
And I wasn't a service providerlike guru, I didn't have certs,
right, it was just my firstengineering job, great place to
learn, but pretty, prettyintense.

(39:50):
Let's see, we didn't talk aboutproduct management, did we?

Speaker 1 (39:56):
We skimmed it, but if you want to dive into it, you
would know better.
No, I?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
I wouldn't, I wouldn't dive into it, but I
would just.
I would just say that so notproduct marketing, but product
management.
So you basically own a product.
The equip is like you know,you're the ceo of the product,
but basically the buck stopswith you.
You decide what gets built andwhat doesn't.
Customers come to you withfeature requests and all kinds
of stuff and you have to decide.

(40:20):
You have a limited amount ofdeveloper resources that you can
build with, so you basicallyhave to prioritize.
You just have a ton of requestscoming in of things that people
want and you have to prioritizewhat to build and what to not.
That's kind of my veryoversimplified understanding of
the role.
It's a cool role and it seemslike I've seen a lot, a good

(40:42):
amount of people in leadershipin big tech organizations that,
like started out in productmanagement.
Like the CEO at Juniper is anexample, it was like a product
manager at one point.
Right, it seems.
It seems like a very good.
If you own a product that doesreally well and you manage it
well, I think it's really goodvisibility.
At the very least you know inthat company if not in the
industry, a lot ofresponsibility.

(41:03):
What else Long-term leadershiproles.
Do we want to talk about that?

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly if you're at a
network engineer and you want tostep into a leadership role,
then you might be maybe like ateam lead or a supervisor,
something like that, and thenyou know you can progress into
manager, director, vp, you knowthose.
Those definitely are longerterm kind of kind of goals,

(41:31):
right.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
How the hell does somebody become a CTO?
Like the C-suite stuff justblows my mind right.
You become a manager and thenyou become a director, and then
you become a VP, and that wholepath.
Just I don't know.
I don't know how you do thatyeah.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, I don't know either.
I'm not there, but when I thinkabout people that take those
kinds of roles, they tend tohave a more varied background,
right Like they've done a littlebit of everything that gives
them this wider I don't knowwider lens, more kind of
experience.

(42:05):
I mean typically the peoplethat I've seen get hand-huddled
for those kinds of roles thatyou know they, they have that
more varied experience or maybethey've they've done something
to like move oceans at aparticular company that you know
they want somewhere else, kindof thing.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
I feel like strategy is a big thing right yeah,
absolutely yeah yeah, all right,did we run out?

Speaker 1 (42:27):
let's see you know I I think we've talked about a lot
.
There's obviously a lot ofopportunity, right like, like,
if you can't get into networkingand be stuck in networking,
there's so much that you can do.
I think, wherever you're at inyour career, having an idea of
where you want to go now willhelp be that guiding light for

(42:47):
you when you make careerdecisions going forward, right.
So if you've heard us talktonight and you want to be a
product manager or technicalenablement, like you or I,
content creation is somethingthat you should be thinking
about, right.
So one of the things thathelped me land my role is having
the background as a teacher,having the experience of writing

(43:08):
lab guides and sharing mytechnical knowledge through the
podcast and the blog articlesand all of these other things.
So if that's something thatyou're interested in and it will
help build your resume, thinkabout how you can create content
that can show how good of acommunicator you are and how
good of a teacher you are, tokind of land a role like that.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
And it's really just, I think, leaning into your
strengths right, like that'sbeen coming up for me in
interviews because I've beendoing it for I don't know the
past five to 10 years, likestarting with a blog 10 years
ago and somebody, when I'm, whenI'm interviewing for a role to
communicate and create contentfor a vendor right, for a
company, I have a portfolio ofwork.
I have a body of work that I'vebeen working on all this time

(43:55):
which is really helpful right,like, oh, yeah, you, you know
what makes you think you coulddo this job.
Well, go check out my portfolio.
I have, you know, all thisbecause I love to communicate
right.
So if you want to communicateright, start, you know, creating
some content.
Um, dan dan said in the chat,was c was cio for a while, worst

(44:15):
decision ever, burned out.
But what he said after that Ithought was cool.
He said you hit C-level role byunderstanding the business, the
technology and the people andhow all those interact.
It seems pretty intense to me.
That's a lot of things tounderstand and then how they all
interplay with each other in anorganization.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah, but that's that's a really valid point,
right, there are two verydifferent things.
Like, you can be the bestengineer, systems administrator,
whatever, because you knowthose systems, but if you don't
know how they support thebusiness and you know or or if
you don't understand thebusiness to be able to link the
technology to it like maybethere's a new technology coming

(44:56):
out that could really help thebusiness, well, if you don't
understand how those two couldpossibly fit together and what
the benefits are to help makethe more business agile, right,
then it's going to be hard foryou to fit into one of those
kind of C-level roles.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
It took me such a long time to listen to that
advice.
Yvonne Sharp has been saying itfor years.
Long time to listen to thatadvice.
Yvonne Sharp has been saying itfor years.
Like the best thing you can doif you're in a network
engineering role is learn thebusiness.
Join those calls, the cool youknow what I call the Kool-Aid
calls.
I can't stand those calls right, but you know, learn the lingo,
see how they're talking.
Find out what's important toleadership.
Because for me, as a networkengineer, I just I don't know

(45:31):
how common this is, but I feellike speaking to network
engineers, like well, it's justthe network and it's good and no
, it's not the network and it'snot broken, it's.
I always felt separated fromthe business, you know, and even
the application folks and thedevs, you know.
Oh, my thing isn't working.
Like all right, well, you needport such and such, that wasn't
on your request, like it alwaysfelt like this tenuous

(45:52):
relationship.
Everybody was always comingafter the network.
So I always felt culturallylike it was just we were always
trying to prove problems weren'tthe network, but to not get all
emotional and butthurt about itand just take a couple steps
back and realize there's abigger picture happening and
there's a company running abusiness that has applications
that people have to get to sothat they can generate revenue

(46:13):
and the network is critical forthat and so realizing the part
that networking plays into theoverall business, that took me a
really long time and I kind offelt I don't know, I don't want
to say above it, that's not theright word but we had a job to
do and we were doing it right,like just keep the network.
I didn't want to be and again,maybe it's the place you're in

(46:33):
and the culture but I was soburnt out I didn't care about
the business and I know that's aterrible thing to say out loud,
but like the network's running,I was up five nights last week,
right, like I'm freaking tired,I'm grumpy.
I did everything you said.
I don't want to hear about thebusiness right now, even though
the business is paying mypaycheck, but Yvonne Sharp has

(46:54):
just been for years.
The more you can learn aboutthe business, I think, the
better for your career.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
It is definitely a level of minutiae that you have
to learn.
You're already saturated withprojects and break-fix and all
this other stuff.
Now to have to go learn thisadditional thing the business,
the lingo, the things that thebusiness cares about.
It's just one more thing tohave to do.
And if you don't have thebandwidth, I can certainly see
why you would hear that and belike, oh no.
But I would say, anywhereyou're at in your career, if you

(47:25):
can learn what's important tothe business, what is it that
leadership is talking about andif you can link that to what
you're trying to advocate for,that's just going to make things
easier.
I'll give you a good example.
I used to work for amanufacturing company and the
leadership was always talkingabout these large rock projects.

(47:46):
So there was always this likethere's sand and everybody is
working on sand, and thenthere's pebbles.
We might drive over those,we'll feel them, but we can
working on sand.
And then there's pebbles.
We might drive over those,we'll feel them, but we can
navigate around them.
But then there's these largerocks.
They're blocking the road,they're impeding our ability to
travel smoothly forward and makerevenue goals and do these

(48:08):
things that the business wantsto do.
Those are the big things thatthe business cares about wants
to do.
Those are the big things thatthe business cares about.
So if I was able to one learnthat these large rock things are
important, learn what thoselarge rocks were, now I can look
at the technology portfolio andsay, okay, I understand this

(48:28):
problem.
This solution would really helpus get over this large rock
right.
And once you can tell peoplethat and they can articulate it
up the chain, that's going tohelp you get approval and move
forward.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, you had me thinking too of you know, when I
say hindsight's always 20-20,.
Right, like when, if I had beenmore attuned with the business
at an old job of mine, I wouldhave seen that all the things
that they were trying to enactwere for agility Like we need
our network to be more on demand.
Like the cloud right, we need tobe able to get services.
I mean, it took six weeks toget a new VLAN provision in our

(49:04):
place.
Right, like that's insane whenyou know now public cloud is a
thing and you press a button andit's done so.
But at the time again, becausewe were just drowning in work
and I was so burnt out like,well, you know, we, we need the
agility of the cloud and youneed to learn automation
yesterday so that we can becomeagile.
To me, just the con I didn'thave the context, like I didn't
have this holistic view of whatthey were doing.

(49:26):
I just knew it was more crapthat they were forcing down my
throat, that I had to do and Iwas already burnt out.
But I think if I had a betterunderstanding of the business
and I wasn't, so in my littleworld and my silo of, like, just
leave me alone.
I'm drowning already.
Like, oh right, we do have tobe agile.
Our competitors are agile.
Like the cloud model is what's,you know, the new paradigm?
Right, that's what we need.
We need reliable, stablenetworks that we can just spin

(49:48):
up things on demand, becausethat wasn't what we had on prem.
But the way I received that wasjust like ugh, you know, it was
just more crap.
Right, that I didn't havebandwidth for.
But now, looking back, like,well, yeah, they were.
Just leadership was trying tomake us more agile so that we
could have faster speed tomarket and generate, you know,
more revenue, which helps us all.
Sure, but I didn't hearleadership say that.

(50:09):
So, to that earlier point of,like someone said, you have to
understand the technology andthe business and the people and
how it all works together.
Somebody somewhere forgot whatit was like to be that schmuck
at the keyboard working fourmaintenance nights a week and
when you throw two more gigantictech stacks on them that they
have to learn right away, Ithink if there was communication
down like, guys, we have to dothis to compete.

(50:30):
The market has changed, youknow, public cloud has changed
everything and we need to get upto speed on that.
I never heard anybody say that.
I just heard automate or leave.
So I think how you communicatewith your people top down can
make a big difference on whetherthey'll even listen.
I mean, I take responsibilityfor not being more attuned to
the business, but I think theway the business talks to the

(50:52):
people can help facilitate maybemore conversation than just oh,
more crap.
Great, when the hell am Isupposed to do this?
You got kids, aj, how'd you doit?
Man, right, that thing I alwaysused to say how do you do it?

Speaker 1 (51:07):
How do you find the time?
How do you do it?
Oh man, we got another goodcomment here.
When you're in a business howwould you approach this where
the effort is made to keepeverything segregated, so it
sounds a lot like where you were.
So everything's always siloed,it's just big.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
I think it's size right.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Yeah, yeah, and I know a lot of.
It's like security, right, ifyou have one person that has the
keys to the kingdom, then it'sgoing to leave you vulnerable.
So, having the ability to scaleand having groups of people
that are focused on certainthings like you have your LAN
team, your WAN team, securityteam, core team, so on and so

(51:49):
forth but I guess the decidingfactor is how much communication
is going across those teams.
Sure, you have your experts,you have the people that are
focused, but when you needsomething from another team,
what does that communicationlook like?
And I think that's where, inyour case, maybe you didn't need
to learn tech stacks, maybe youjust needed to learn how to
communicate across the silos.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah, yeah, and each silo also has their own
processes.
So you know again me beingcrybaby, whiny guy at the time
who was just burnt out.
Well, you need to move faster.
And I'm thinking like well, forsomebody to spin up a new app,
those app owners have tointeract with six different
siloed teams and each of themhave way too much process

(52:31):
because things broke over time.
And management adds process toslow it down, to break less
things.
So it just things took.
Partly why things took foreverwas because leadership put so
much process in place, whichit's not their fault.
That's what you're supposed todo in these situations.
It's what they tell you to do.
You got to slow down, we'rebreaking too many things, right.
But then you get to a pointwhere there's a paradigm shift,

(52:52):
like public cloud, like well, wegot to go fast now.
Well, okay, but there's a hellof a lot of process and six
different silos that maybe Ican't fix that.
So you're right.
I mean there's communicationacross silos, there's all the
process it's.
I think the bigger organizationgets just the more mired and
like everything just slows downand it's really hard to

(53:13):
communicate to get things doneIf a company isn't acting as one
entity.
I think it's really, whichmight be why there's some really
great leaders like C-suite CIOs, ctos.
They know, they know what'simportant and they know how to
do that and they know to stayagile and stay relevant.
You have to act as one, likethere's some companies none have
come to mind right now but likethey can turn on a dime.
They're just everybody.
We're doing this now, right,and they'll do that where other

(53:35):
places.
Just it's really hard to change.
People don't want to change,right.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
That's true.
Well, sir, I want to remind ourlisteners if you've enjoyed
this episode, you can hit thatlike button and smash that bell
icon to be notified of all ofour future episodes.
If you're listening on Spotifyor Apple Podcasts, please leave
us a review.
A little five stars, maybe Alittle bit helps out.

(54:01):
There's now this new feature inour show notes.
You can send us a text, you cansend us a message directly from
the show notes of any episodethat you're listening to.
You can ask us a question, letus know how we're doing.
We love getting that feedback.
We love hearing from our.
Any episode that you'relistening to, you can ask us a
question, let us know how we'redoing.
Uh, we love getting thatfeedback.
We love hearing from ourlisteners.
So, please, uh, hit that linkand, uh, let us know what you
think.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Wait, who receives those text messages?
I have received no texts.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
They're not.
They're not texts to our mobiledevices.
Thank, thankfully, uh isthankfully.
It goes into our podcasthosting dashboard.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
You people better not text me in the middle of the
night, that'd be great.
Andy's number is Publish it onthe site Any questions or
comments send them right to me.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Right at the bottom of the website Call Andy.
Andy.
What do you think?
I think that there's so muchopportunity for anybody who's
currently a network engineer.
I mean, if you want to stay anetwork engineer and just keep
doing what you're doing, hey, ifyou enjoy it, there's no fault
to you.
But I think there's plenty ofother opportunities out there.
As we've heard before, likenetwork engineering isn't, as

(55:11):
you know, sexier or whatever, asit used to be, and we're trying
to get more and more peopleinto it.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, yeah, listen, it's a great career.
It's treated me very well.
I love it.
The learning never ends, whichI love and hate, but right now I
love it.
And yeah, there's just so manyother roles in technology that
our skills directly relate tothat may even pay better, so

(55:37):
it's a really great skill set tohave and I thought it was the
only skill set I would need forthe rest of my career.
As it turns out, it's afoundational skill set, so it
doesn't seem like it's enoughanymore for whatever that's
worth, and even if you're justthrowing on some automation on
top of it, right.
But today, route and switchdoes not seem like enough.

(55:58):
Uh, in some places it might be,but sure, I feel like the
pendulum is swinging and but yes, it's still a great career.
We need to get more people inthe field and there are just so
many opportunities having thisskillset and so many you know we
probably talked about 20, 25 ofthem tonight different things
you can do with that.
So, yeah, it's a great career,it's a great place to be.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah, I love it.
I don't regret getting into it,and while I'm not as much of a
network engineer as I used to beI have not configured a routing
protocol since last year atthis point but I still
understand networking and thatunderstanding helps me
monumentally in my currentposition.
So I'm trying I really amtrying to stay as close as I can

(56:47):
to it, partly because we havethis show and I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
I was going to say you just keep running the
network, our network engineering, and you got enough street cred
.
Man, worry about it, right?

Speaker 1 (56:56):
right.
Yeah, I'm trying to do the revup to research stuff that's
going on right now so that way Ican maintain my ccnp.
I really, even though I don'ttouch cisco anymore, I really
don't want to let that go.
Man, like I, I I still want todo an expert level.
Sir, I I just you know I workso hard to get it I really I'm
going to hold on to it for dearlife.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Can you do CEs for that, ce credits or whatever
they're called?
Yeah, yeah, I can do CEs to.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah, say rev up to research like free CEs.
So complete a course, get freeCEs that goes towards renewing
your certifications.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
You can't let your NP expire.
Listen, we met through the NPand I know how many times it
took you to pass that exam.
I don't think you can?

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, I don't think you can let that one go and
you're going to get your DE andor IE someday.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
So you're going to yeah you got to keep that NP man
.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
I want the DE.
I don't know if I'm going to dothe IE.
I'm going to have to get awhole new stack of lab routers,
if I'm going to have to get awhole new stack of Labrador's.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
if I'm going to do that, Do you need your NP for
the DE?
Is it a prereq?
No, no, oh.
So then let it expire.
Who cares as?
Long as you don't need it.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Right, exactly Awesome.
Well, this has been another funepisode and we will see you
next time on another episode ofthe Art of Network Engineering
podcast.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Hey everyone, this is Andy.
If you like what you heardtoday, then please subscribe to
our podcast and your favoritepodcatcher.
Click that bell icon to getnotified of all of our future
episodes.
Also follow us on Twitter andInstagram.
We are at Art of Net Eng,that's Art of N-E-T-E-N-G.
You can also find us on the webat artofnetworkengineeringcom,

(58:34):
where we post all of our shownotes, blog articles and general
networking nerdery.
You can also see our prettyfaces on our YouTube channel
named the Art of NetworkEngineering.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.