Net Eng career success now and in the future, with Dr Nic

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
In this podcast, we explore tools, technologies and
talented people.
We introduce new informationthat will expand your skill sets
and toolbox and share thestories of fellow network
engineers.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
My name is Andy Laptev and thisepisode I am joined by the one,
the only, Kevin Nanz, anadjacent node.
How are you, Kevin?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm doing fabulous, other than my internet having
issues, I'm doing great.
I'm still recovering from I'meating right now.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
I was going to say what are you eating?
Eating, but you wait until theshow started.
Start chewing.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I have a jar of candy next to me from halloween and I
can't have it in my vicinitywithout without reaching for
something what's your favoritehalloween candy?
I like a fruity gummy kind ofguy, so like gummy bears um any
kind of, uh like sweet tarts,that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's sweet, yeah, sweet stuff it's like my wife
and kids.
I'm like a reese's peanutbutter cup guy all the way
chocolate and peanut butter.
It's like the, the marriage.
That's just the perfect.
Yeah, made in heaven, right?
So, besides your halloween, uh,extravaganza over there of
candy.
How are things in kevin land?
How are things?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
they're good.
They're good, um.
Um, just been busy with work,nothing too crazy, still
recovering from the electionnight.
Election was recent.
I didn't sleep at all.
I'm not going to get politicalat all, but I just love the
drama of the night.
We're like what state's turningthis and the votes I live off
that.
That's drama.
I love it Better than any kindof fiction out there.

(01:41):
It's fun for me.
It is a lot of drama and I'mhappy to hear you're busy at
work.
Um, how is that?
By the way, how is it to bebusy at work?
You jealous, andy, don't you?
You'll be a little bit, alittle bit.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
You'll be busy soon, don't worry about it.
We're getting there.
Well, kev, thanks for hoppingon, buddy.
It's always great to see youand um yeah, we're looking good.
The internet looks solid rightnow.
Um and uh, tonight's specialguest is nicholas calcutta.
Doc, do I have to call you drnick?
Hey, everybody.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh no, not yet.
Not yet.
No, couple years, 2026,hopefully, if I, you know, can
do my homework on time.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
So, nick, thanks for coming on.
Tell the people, uh, who youare.
What do you do, where do youwork, what is your doctorate in?
Let's, let's get a high levelwho this guy is before we dig
into our topic.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh man, you got to ask all the hard questions here,
right?
So you know the Calcutta, right.
So we'll start off.
I've been networking IT spacereally for what?
Over 12 years now, plusOfficially 12 years plus, but
you know longer than that.
I got my bachelor's degree atFlorida State College of
Jacksonville in networkingtechnologies it's much longer,

(02:46):
but they addedtelecommunications in there,
because they used to teachtelecommunications too as well.
Masters at Western GovernorsUniversity we had a couple guys
in Discord also did the samething there Got a master's in IT
management and currently goingto USF for a doctorate in
business administration.
And yeah, usf man, it's great.

(03:06):
After this podcast I'm drivingright down, got a hotel in St
Pete, get there probably about 1, 2 am, then back up at 5 am,
get ready for class at 7.30.
So yeah, it's the sacrifices wegot to get it done.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
But yeah, so that's education-wise, I think you're
the most educated networkengineer that I know so far,
besides Russ White.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
There's Russ.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
White and Nick Calcutta.
That's education, but certs.
I actually don't have a Ciscocert, so you know, took the CCNA
once a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
But you've also been a network admin.
Right, You've done the job.
It's not just all education, ohyeah.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Done the job for many , many years in multiple
different spaces, was that postlike bachelor's, did you like?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
hey, I got my networking bachelor's degree,
let me go get a job.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
So I actually got networking job, official
networking job, like rightaround my associates, honestly.
So I was working as a desktopsupport technician for the local
government and the guy that wasa network admin was leaving.
I'm like, well, nick, you'regoing to school for it and you
kind of know what he knows, soyou want to go ahead and do it.
I'm like, heck, yeah, why thehell wouldn't I?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Let's just do.
This Sounds so much likegovernment.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh yeah, hey, it was great, I got paid.
I got a nice little raise, afive thousand dollar bump, right
you know.
And uh, my first project wasgetting rid of two core 4507s
and then rebuilding the wholebomb.
We had a bomb from presidio andI said, no, that looks like
crap, I'm not doing that.
We did the whole bomb myselfand um did some 30, 50 chassis.

(04:42):
The collapse core model isbeautiful and half the price,
right.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
So that was great there, so you belong.
That's the qualificationportion of our conversation is
you have an education andgraduate education in networking
.
You have over a decade ofexperience doing the job.
You are one of us, so that'swhy.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
I asked so that the people watching yeah, the people
watching and listening Okay,he's one of us, so that's,
that's why I asked, so that thepeople watching.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, the people watching, listening.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Okay, he's, he's one of us and generally friday yeah,
generally our guests are mostlyus, but I just want to let
people know because they mightbe fooled.
At least I was initially bylike this guy's a doctor, he's a
college professor, like hasthis guy ever worked on a
network?
But you've done the job, you'veyou, but you've done the job,
you've done the thing.
So with that, I guess, said youand I spoke, I don't know, it

(05:30):
was a month or two ago and youwere presenting something at a
tech conference, right, and Iknow that you wanted like a peer
review on the doc and stuff.
So I think that's kind of wherewe want to hang out on.
This episode is what you talkedabout.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong,but my understanding is this

(05:51):
presentation was kind of likethe history of networking.
Like, hey, we started back inthe day with ARPANET, here's
what you had to know, here werethe protocols.
And then you kind of do a timewalk of over the years.
Here's how things progressed,here was the growth, here's what
we had to know.
And then you kind of do aforward looking portion of like

(06:11):
and you know what, if you wantto do this job today, tomorrow
and moving forward, or you knowif you're in school and you want
to do this in the future.
You know these are.
These are the trends you'veseen.
I really like the analyticallike we all have an opinion,
right.
I these are the trends you'veseen.
I really like the analyticallike we all have an opinion,
right.
I got laid off last year and Ihave opinions on like, oh, these
are the things you got to knowbecause I didn't know them.
But that's just my little echochamber, right, but yours looked

(06:32):
really analytical andhistorical.
So I'd love to kind of justwalk the audience through this
information that you found.
Not that we want to spend 35minutes on ARPANET, but where
would you like to start?
Because really, where I'm goingwith this is at the end of this
conversation.
What do you need to know?
What competencies do you needto get a job in network

(06:56):
engineering, to stay employed innetwork engineering, to climb
through the ranks and bepromoted in network engineering
and to stay employed in thefuture, because there have been
a couple of disruptivetechnologies in the past four or
five years that you know itcould be seen as huh, I better
learn that, or else.
So, um, I'll shut up there, butthat's kind of to just to set
the scene.
So where would you like tostart?

Speaker 2 (07:17):
I mean we can start off like let's, let's look at a
brief history of the past.
So tcp was developed in 1974.
The first email was sent out in1971.
You know I came on the edge offrame relay um mainly just
ethernet ospf, um ergrp right.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
So really when you get in the field, you mean when
you were working in the field,yeah, yeah, and we had the
ugliest ospf ring.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
we had one man network, um for all of our sites
with the one giant OSPF.
That's why every time thequestion is well, what's these
stubby areas?
Stubby areas, no, no, no, letthe CPU cook.
I pay for all that CPU on thatrouter.
I'm getting all of it done,okay.
So you know, at first I'll saywhen I started going to school,

(08:02):
for networking a lot of it'scommand line, there was no
helpful GUIs, right, there's noClickOps Terminal.
You save that terminal, thatserial port connector to console
cable with your life.
Right, that blue cable was yourlife.
If you lost it, you werehunting down for it.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
And we interacted with the infrastructure via CLI,
because that's all we had.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's all we had that Telnet, ssh, hell,
sometimes SSH, if you're lucky.
Sometimes it's only Telnetbecause the switches or routers
are so old.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Right Dial-up modems too.
Still dial-up modems in thenetwork Did either of you guys
have a dial-up modem.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, I did.
I'm going to show my age herebecause I did.
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
My first internet connection for college was a
dial-up.
I remember the screaming soundand all that.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
You're a little older than me, but when I was a kid I
would sneak, not that much nowI know how old you are.
I would sneak out in the middleof the night and go to the
computer room.
My parents were sleeping andhad to put a blanket over the
motives.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Oh, really so you couldn't.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
I've never had that problem.
We just turned on a night andjust let it go.
That thing was always dialed in.
Was it on a gateway computer,Kev.
I think so probably.
Yeah, he looks like he had acow computer right.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
The commercials were effective, man.
The commercials made it funthey were.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
I mean, I had a gateway.
In middle school my mother hada gateway.
She used it for AOL.
We used it to play command andconquer in aol right you know
what amazed that so.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
So I'm going to interrupt you for a second, then
we'll jump back looking at yourtimeline here on the, on the
and and for the, the folkslistening and watching.
We'll um this document's onnick's website so we'll put it
in the show notes and you can goout and take a look at it.
But I see Ethernet was createdin 1975.
I've learned in the past yearor two that AIML was created
well before that.

(09:51):
It's a much older technology.
We are now today in 2024.
Help me out with math.
I don't know how long 75 to2024 is, but about 49 years.
Kevin's counting, 49 years,kevin's counting.
And Ethernet still can't handlethe AI HPC workloads because

(10:12):
it's not able to do a losslessfabric like InfiniBand.
So what I find interesting?
Just one little piece of thistimeline that you're looking at
Now again, the Ultra EthernetConsortium are working on it.
They have a V1 spec coming outsoon.
There's actually a lot of realwork happening and we're going
to have Dr Jay Metz on in a fewweeks to talk about what they're
doing there.
But just one little piece ofthis, like to your point,
there's all these technologiesyou look at.
Ethernet is 49 years old, ai isolder than it.

(10:34):
But all of a sudden AI ML getshot and then we're like in the
networking space like, oh crap,you know 49 year old ethernet we
have to revamp and reworkbecause it can't handle, it
can't create a lossless fabric.
But we had 49 years to do it,but AIML didn't pop right.
So it's kind of interestinglike those disruptive things
that come up that force.

(10:55):
You know innovation in thenetwork.
So I'm sorry to interrupt, butI just jumped out at you.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I mean I think honestly that that goes into
more of the future networking,right.
So as our compute stacks havegotten better over the years,
right, we can do crazier things,right.
I remember the best time I hadwell, one of the greatest things
you know when a gigabitinternet where my limitation was
no longer how fast my internetwas to download a game or
something, it was how fast myhard drive could write right and

(11:22):
steam got pegged out, not anetwork, I got pegged out on cpu
cycles or hard drive cycles.
I was like, okay, so now, nowthe constraints move somewhere
else.
That's, that's nice and we kindof.
It's kind of how networkingevolved, right, once you're
on-prem systems there, a lot ofjust man networks, your frame
relay, mpls, stuff, so yourchassis switches, your access

(11:45):
layer switches, that didn't haveyour Wi-Fi components built
into them, right, there's nocontrollers built in there.
There's no ROM on there largeenough to throw a Lama model on
there or even a router to runViptela or another.
Bring your own OS right.
So we had a lot of more.
This device does one thing andit kind of SDd.

(12:05):
I remember when sd networkscame out, right, not sd-wan.
So I was like you know, sdnetworks.
That's interesting, you know.
We had a little class of it incollege and I'm like I get it.
But enterprise wise, I've onlyseen sd software defined
networking really implementedeffectively in large-scale
enterprises or products likeVMware, nsx, stuff like that.

(12:28):
That's where software-definednetworking really popped up.
But I think it laid backbonesfor other things.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
So you were talking about the internet.
So that was like the explosionin the 90s, right, was that the
big 90s to 2000s, the dot-combomb.
I'm trying to keep us in timehere, like where, where we are
in the technical evolution.
So like, right, the internet.
You mentioned when you startedframe relay.
I'm a fellow.
I'm a fellow frame relayer.

(12:54):
They told me when I took myCCNA I'd never see it in
production and my first job inproduction was migrating like 75
, you know, bank branches off aframe relay to MPpls like oh
look frame relays here.
I know what a delce is, yay lookat the delce mapping, you know
stuff they say, we we'd neversee um I'm pretty sure there's a

(13:14):
government network somewhere.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
He's in frame relay still.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Oh, 100, 100 not mine , I had not one lines on t1
lines for a while.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
So so do we want to jump to the 2000s?
Because really I I don't wantto get too down in the minutia
of the little technical stuff ateach decade.
But I guess what I'm trying todo is have us paint a story of
the evolution and networking sothat we can wind up like today,
oh yeah, and then in the future.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
I mean, look at Wi-Fi so as Wi-Fi got better, or
Ethernet got better too.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
we got out of 10 megabits to 100 megabits to one
gigabit full duplex and thatkind of stuck there for a while.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Only recently, 10 gigabit Ethernet has become
consumer grade right for pricewise.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
I can't imagine what my dial-up was what were they
like 64K.
I don't even remember 56K modem, right 56K.
I have a gig fiber handoffsymmetric gig at my house now
and I started at 56 K.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
And that's what made T one's great Cause.
T ones were at 1.54 megabitsper second, symmetrical, and
they were like, oh, this isblazing fast.
This is great, right, you stillneed to know your.
You know fundamentals, right,how to route, where to route to
that.
That hasn't changed.
Right, the basics, tcp, yourosi layers, hasn't changed.
You're always going to needcritical analytical thing skills

(14:32):
.
That's never going to change.
You know one thing I can sayabout all it those two things
never going to change.
Um, packet analysis.
I think today I was actuallyjohn capianca wrote the post
where knowing Wireshark skillsis kind of a lost art doing
packet analysis, and I agreewith it.
It's been a lost art.
I used to have I still havelike all the Wireshark Bible on

(14:54):
my desk.
It's like thick old book.
You know for all the graphs,everything that it can do to
help you.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
I'm so embarrassed to say I've never ran a PCAP.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well embarrassed or lucky know.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, now, my excuse is I worked in such large shops
that we had people to pull themfor us, like there was a tap and
somebody would pull them andthen they would, you know, throw
them on the bridge and thesuper bright architects would
look and be like you know we'dbe.
We'd be at hours smashing ourhead into the wall and the
person that solved the problemwas always the person that
looked at the PCAP.
I go, well, this is what'shappening.

(15:28):
So we I remember having ChrisGreer on I think that's his name
the packet pilot guy.
I'm sorry if I'm bastardizinghis name, but he's.
He's like the wire shark guy, Ithink, or one of them, and I'm
dying to get together with himand he's going to set me up and
I'd like to do some of that,because I just can't believe
I've gotten this far and notdone captures.
Have you guys both run likeWireshark captures and looked at

(15:50):
PCAPs and stuff?

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Oh yeah, it's magical right, and I worked at the ISP.
Never that was a never, I think, but ever since I've been into
a non-ISP environmentenvironment it's been.
You know, logs don't tell youeverything, right, gui logs
don't show you everything.
Um, even cli logs don't showyou anything.
The only thing that tells youthe truth every single time is a
packet capture every singletime right.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Pcap never lies.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Pcap didn't happen right, yeah, sand knowledge used
to be a bigger problem.
Back with fiber, channel sandswere more prevalent.
I remember my first time tryingto work on a was a silk,
silkworm or brocade, I can'tremember, it was just.
I'm like you know, let me see aline of this, let's see if I
can get it to work, and that was.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
That was atrocious that's a storage array network
yeah, storage, storage right now.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, storage is that what that?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
server stuff the term server yeah, and then you know
the nexus line, you know, andthat's did Channel as well, that
was.
That's always a fun tool.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
And I see you have on your slide like some scripting
and this was the 90s and 2010sand as much as I'd like to say,
everywhere I work, nobody wasscripting.
There were a few cats that weredoing some scripts.
It wasn't widely deployed.
But if you get on a call withsomebody and work on something
like what is that Like oh, andwork on something like what is
that like oh, it's just a scriptI run.
When I do changes, I'm likewhoa so oh yeah

Speaker 2 (17:05):
there always seem to be one or two cats around like
oh, yeah, I you know I I do somescripting some scripting and
routing protocols, definitely,you know, on those things.
Just some scripting, not toomuch.
I mean, we're talking about 90sto 2010s, apis on network
switches, not that crazy, youknow, not as open as were you, I
think, towards more of the2010s, maybe some Yang models.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
What was the scripting back then?
Was it like Bash?
I might even be saying dumb?

Speaker 2 (17:30):
things.
Yeah, bash, I'm pretty sure,just Bash.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Just Bash.
Yeah, you know, Like today allthe rage is Python, but back
then it was Bash.
Right, Bash commands.
Yeah maybe it depends on theplatform you ran on too.
Not every switch isprogrammable like that.
So before we go on to this nextslide, I want to say something
that scott robon said to me at ameeting we were at is that this

(17:53):
is all additive and you alludedto that earlier.
Right, like these are thingsyou know networking fundamentals
, route switch, p caps, likeeverything you just said.
It doesn't go away or getreplaced, which is part of what
annoys me about this career,like you know what I mean.
It's always more and more andmore for relatively the the same

(18:14):
amount of money.
And I know I sound like like awhiny cry baby when I say that,
but um it scott helped mereframe that because I said to
him once, eight or nine monthsago, that you know my skills had
atrophied and that I didn'tkeep up with.
And he's like well, those,those skills are still relevant.
You just have to add on to them, to apply them to these

(18:34):
different contexts in these newsystems.
I'm like, oh, because in mymind, route switch didn't matter
anymore.
Right, and then we'll get intoit.
But like ClickOps, we againsomebody else was talking about.
You know, you have theseseasoned network engineers that
come in and they've only been inGUI dashboards and they have no
idea how anything under thehood works.
They just click things and itworks.
So, um, you know, having thatfundamental knowledge, hopefully

(18:57):
all these tools that we'remaking that are abstracting
everything away and not makingus have to know the protocols
and what's happening in the CLILike I don't know what the
future looks like and I knowwe're going to get there, but if
nobody knows how the stuff'sworking and they're all working
in automated GUI dashboards,like there's probably going to
be three people left that theycall when all hell breaks loose.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
That's the thing.
Yeah, if that's all you know,it's what's that?
Mike Tyson quote you knoweveryone's got a plan until you
get punched in the face, sort oflike that, where you know the
GUI, you know what, you know,kind of how you press this
button, press this button and itworks.
Well, that's fine until itdoesn't work.
And once it doesn't workanymore, then you're, you're
worthless.
You have to know the underlying, you have to know how.
You know the basics.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
And as a network engineer, you have to know it.
But then again, at said, well,you call the vendor when you
need the person that knows rightnow.
I hate that.
No, I know it's not a great wayto run your network.
Um, but that was their answerto you know.
Well, click ops is bad and guisare like well, you just call
the vendor and you get theexpert there I mean it's.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
It's one way to do it as a public.
I wouldn't want a publicservant who has to pay for all
that stuff.
We just don't have the money tohave.
You know the expensive servicecontracts.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Okay, that's a really good point.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
I paid for a Cisco smart net on the core switch for
a long time at public service.
I never called TAC once, onlybecause that just took too long.
They're like okay, got theselongs.
I'm like that's too long, buddy, I'll figure it out.
I always followed the burn theboats methodology.
There's no one here to rescueyou.
You got to figure it out.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
That's the best way to learn too, because the next
time it happens it's going tobreak again.
If it breaks one time, it'sgoing to break again.
I don't know when, Maybe 10years from now, but it will
break again.
That's where you're reallymaking the money.
There you can fix it like that.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
You're like oh, you're a hero you can fix it
like that and you're like ohyeah, you're amazing and that
really goes to do.
You have the right managementover your head to allow that
Right.
So you, you can fail a littlebit or take a little bit longer
to fix it, but you fix it.
You learn how to fix it Right,there wasn't somebody saying
well, it's down, let's go calltackle.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Go call somebody right, get them on the phone
right, and that's.
I mean that that's going tovary based on the environment
and what's affected.
Like I was in the isp, where ifsomething broke and we had, you
know, thousands of customersdown, then there there was no
time.
That was.
The standard operatingprocedure was to call tech right
away, you know, keep working onthe issue but get them engaged
as soon as possible, whereas,like at the university, we had,
like you know, 200 down.
We could take a little moretime.
It gave us a little more leewayto try to troubleshoot it and

(21:29):
figure it out.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, exactly, it's got to balance it.
Go sack some hackies.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Kids don't.
They'll be up in an hour.
They're just playing theirRoblox or whatever.
They're probably not playingRoblox, but you get the idea.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
They're just games, hey hack playing roblox.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
But you know, you know, you get the idea.
There's games hacky sack'sdangerous man.
I broke my leg playing hackysack.
That's why, that's why I'm taxport, that's right.
X games on that one.
So so, let's, let's say thedirty word, the cloud knowledge.
You know everything, yeah, Iknow.
So now we're into, like,network engineering skills 2010s
to now, right like now, we'recoming up to present day.
We went from arpanet andeverything else we talked about
in frame relay to like, allright, what do people need to
know today?
And I see some GUI familiarity,which we just talked about.

(22:12):
Cloud knowledge um, that's abig one, right, I mean,
everybody's in a public cloudand for me, when I got
introduced to public cloud, man,it's weird, just weird.
It's very different.
Like have you guys?
Have you guys dabbled at all?
Have you had to do any of thatin any environments Daily?
I'm in there daily and so whenyou got introduced to it, was it

(22:36):
like, hey, nick, spend sixweeks doing the vendors training
before you have to right rightnow?
Now, maybe because you're adoctor, it was easier for you.
But was it a weird transitionfor you to go from like on-prem
networking and how all thatworks to like, okay, now there's
stuff in the cloud?
Because for me, my brain justhad a really hard time.

(22:57):
Like if you're in multi-cloudand we'll probably get there,
but like if you have workloadsall over the place and on-prem
and then something breaks andyou get a call, I'm like where
is it?
How was it built?
Which place do I log into?
What do I check when I'm inthere?
Where I was so familiar withon-prem, I got to get in my disk
switches, look at my routing,see what's going on, check the
logs.
Like I was much more familiarwith on-prem than like the cloud

(23:20):
to me just seemed like thisweird magical place where each
CSP did it differently and Idon't even know where our
application is.
That's having the problem.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Did you?

Speaker 1 (23:27):
have any of those issues going to cloud, or was it
easy for you?

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Oh, it was a pain in the ass.
I gotta say that, and I'mpretty sure my coworkers are on
this.
They'll tell you probably thesame thing, right?
They're probably on YouTubesaying, yeah, yeah, it sucked.
It was a horrible weekend.
So I joined the companyrecently two and a half years
and when I joined I was anetwork admin and they're just
starting their cloud journey.
Like hey, we're already keywaysthere.

(23:52):
We're going to go ahead andmove everything else there,
right?
Azure I kind of knew I had aclass on it.
I had $100 free credit, wentahead and tried it out Cool,
let's do it.
But when we migrated everythingup to Azure and we were testing
things out before that, I hatedit, because all your nerd knobs
are gone.
It's a GUI dashboard but withno helpful features, and it just

(24:17):
makes you realize a dev madethis and no one talked to
networking.
It's like the reverse option,right?

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Almost every automation tool I have tried to
use and work on I have the samethought.
A dev made this and they didn'ttalk to anybody in networking.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, I'm like, well, there's no QoS.
I'm like, well, shit, thatdoesn't help out the problem
there, shit that doesn't helpout the problem there, right, I
can't QoS something here.
Also, moving to cloud latency,you find out and this is a
Silicon Valley quote I love allthe time right, it's where
Guilfoyle and Dinesh, you guys,ever watch Silicon.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Valley.
Oh yeah, Best show ever.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Oh yeah, oh, best show ever.
I watch all the time.
But they're yelling at eachother and they're sitting there
saying hey, they're yelling ateach other and they're sitting
there saying, hey, you knowDinesh, like, well, you know, if
my code wasn't running yourcrappy servers, you know your
network, it wouldn't be aproblem.
And he goes well, my networkdidn't apologize to your shitty
code.
It would have been better,right.
And when you go to cloud you'regoing to find out if you have

(25:15):
shitty code or not.
Real fast.
The networking shows there isno more latency, there's no more
sub-sub-millisecond latency tohide bad calls the cloud, even
the same sub in the cloud, it'sgoing to expose it real fast.
It's unforgiving, right.
And the app guy's like well,it's taking a little bit longer.
And you're like I don't see noproblem here and I can't figure
out why.
And trying to pull a PCAP outof Azure is like asking for

(25:37):
government to give you your taxrefund December 31st.
Huh, azure is like asking forgovernment to give you your tax
refund December 31st.
It was just like this is rough.
So it kind of felt like atfirst managing a network with
one hand behind your back, butthe more you're into it.
The more you know it, you'relike, okay, it's not so scary.
Honestly, tim and Alex andChris helped out a lot in the

(26:00):
Discord chat.
When I was like, hey, I gotthis problem here.
They showed us a little bit hey, here's the black hole on the
gateway subnet.
That probably did that.
I'm like, okay, cool, thanks,man.
It kind of had to rework how itworked, but fundamentally, once
you understand what everythingdoes, you're like, oh, this is
just a normal network, justwhoever made this was drunk
drunk.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Oh, it's like all my networks got it well, there's a
different.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
There's a bourbon high class network drunk, it's
like nightlight.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
No, this is tequila networks I swear that's like a
sasher.
How, how long?
I hate this question but I haveto ask how long did it take you
?
It's like when somebody askshow long it's gonna take me to
get my certification, like, stopit.
Yeah, was it weeks, months,years for you to go?
From what the hell is thisinsanity called weeks to like oh

(26:51):
okay, weeks of being in andbashing your head into it, kind
of thing?

Speaker 2 (26:55):
it was like two solid weeks of okay, I got this.
Let's just you know, do it.
And honestly, I tell all thisto my students too you got to
get your feedback loops.
It's not like, okay, this ishow to do something.
You got to get that feedbackloop.
Here's the goal.
I'm making this server talk tothis server.
How do I do it?
Okay now, how do I do that if Ihave these servers across vpn

(27:18):
tunnels on two different azuredescriptions?
Okay, test that out, right.
Okay, create those feedbackloops where you're learning,
testing, learning testing realfast and the iterative design.
If you do that, it's going toretain a lot more.
So we were moving fast, goingfast and luckily I had a team
with me that was in the same youknow high speed boat, fast.
So it was great.
So we just kept going, doingand it retained.

(27:41):
That helps.
Retain is doing things.
That's why you know lab everyday.
Right, it helps out for sure,right?

Speaker 1 (27:48):
so what I'm going to keep coming back to is what do
you need to be a successfulnetwork engineer now, in the
future?
You need route switch, which iseverything we talked about for
30 minutes, and now we're cloud.
Um, I don't know if it matterswhich provider you choose.
If you want to pick on marketshare, you go AWS, right.
I mean, if your company thatyou're working in is in a
particular cloud, that's whatyou do, but if you're somebody

(28:08):
that just wants to learn a cloud, AWS is very I mean Azure.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
You get the free $100 credits, but I think AWS has a
lot of free tier.
Yeah, easy to use, but I meanmost small businesses are going
to be.
Well, we have Microsoft 365, sowe're probably going to have
Azure right, so get Azure isgood.
Also, the naming I think inAzure is better because Azure
calls them virtual machinesversus AWS is EC2, right.
Lots of compute instances, yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Hold off a tongue, okay.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Automation, should we say the other dirty word?

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I mean automation tools.
They've gotten better.
I mean Terraform, ansible, yep.
I mean my automation tool backin the day was well, you know
I'm trying this SSH open sourcetool that can configure my Cisco
switch for me and it alwaysbroke.
Right Now they've gotten sogood, especially Python.

(29:03):
I mean hell, help, look at pi,ats these automation tools or
testing, it's just it reallyhelps out.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I spent years crying about automation and the past
two months I've just beenlearning python.
I know it's been terrible, I'm,but I'm learning it like it's
not.
I guess it's like anything Likeif you can learn I don't know,
ospf, timers or, like you know,like the other stuff.
I almost quit networking oversubnetting because I just my

(29:28):
brain exploded and I didn'tunderstand it and I'm like what
is this?
I can't do this, I'm not smartenough, but you know, now I can
subnet.
So like I think, if you canlearn hard things and routing
and switching are hard things inmy opinion you know you can
learn things like automation,but maybe for newer people it's
not that big of a deal.
Like, if you're a computerscience major and you come out

(29:48):
with like seven languages, great, I got to know Python, no big
deal.
So let me ask you this questionDo you most of the network
people I meet got intonetworking because they didn't
like math and didn't likeprogramming?
Check, yeah, I, most of thenetwork people I meet got into
networking because they didn'tlike math and they didn't like
programming Check Yep, yeah, Imean, that's why people get into
networking, not all.
And again, dr Nick's going totell us something different.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
Dr, Nick's got a school list.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Most of the guys oh yeah, I took all this.
Like Tim is an example thatused to be on the show, like he
was a computer science guy anddidn't like coding, but then he
got introduced to networking andhe was like he had that moment
we all have like, oh my God,this is amazing, this is what
happens.
Like, are you kidding me?
There's this.
You kind of fall in love withnetworking, and I don't know a

(30:32):
lot of devs maybe they fall inlove with coding.
But the reason I think I was soresistant to automation for so
long is because I thoughtnetworking was how to get away
from that.
Now here we are and if you lookat any job description, you
have to do some automation atthe very least Ansible, right,
and you should probably knowsome Python.
So I'm just saying all that tosay that somebody like me who
cried for years that I didn'twant to learn automation I

(30:53):
couldn't learn automation, Ifailed out of programming
computer science in college Likethe stories we tell ourselves
can really create the realitythat we live in.
And then it's like well, if Isay I can't I wrote this article
about storytelling recently andthen I'll shut up, but I used
to say I can't run because Ihave bad knees and because I
told myself I couldn't run.
I didn't run for 10 yearsbecause my knees were bad.

(31:14):
Then I got laid off lastDecember and I got depressed and
I'm like, well, I can lay inbed, which isn't going to do
anything, or I'll go out and runCause I know I'll feel better
and I'm going to run until Ifeel better.
I ran 400 miles in eight months.
I felt better.
It got my mind and body where Ineeded it to be able to be
productive in interviews.
But the difference between theguy who didn't run for 10 years

(31:35):
and the guy who ran 400 miles ineight months was a story I told
myself.
I told myself I couldn't run.
So I didn't run until one day Isaid I'm going to run and I ran
.
So it's the same withautomation for me, I think for
me.
I don't know if it helpsanybody Like you gotta be
mindful of the stories you tellyourself, because if you tell
yourself you can't learn Python,you're not going to learn
Python.
Once I told myself, if I wantto get a job in networking again

(31:58):
, I'm going to have to learnautomation.
I'm learning automation.
It's not that bad, but I had tochange how I thought about it.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
There's a lot of resistance.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Well, yeah, it's why the Network Automation Forum has
been created.
I mean, there's a bunch ofpeople trying to solve this
problem.
Why won't these networkingpeople adopt automation?
You know what?
I mean?
Every vendor Like what's wrongwith these networking people?
For me, it just I told myself Icouldn't, it was beyond me, I
wasn't smart enough.
It wasn't true, and I don'tknow if any of the other
networking people out there feelthat way.
But, um, okay, kev, youmentioned you guys don't do much

(32:30):
automation, right?
I?

Speaker 3 (32:32):
mean I can't relate to what you're saying, like I
never felt, like I wasn't smartenough, I'm not good enough,
kev's got it all.
I'm not conceited, I'm just.
I'm just saying like it's just.
I just never had the desire,you know, and I've just avoided
it.
And yeah, you know, it's youkind of have to, at least for me
.
I have to need it in my currentjob for me to want to do it I

(32:53):
call bullshit.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
So let's say you have 300 devices, you have to update
an snmp community string on.
How are you going to do that?

Speaker 3 (32:59):
I get one of the admins to do it.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Delegation.
I like it.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
But that was something that I ran into in
production and then my eyes wereopened, Like, oh, I can't do
this no-transcript, divvied itup.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
There's like six network engineers and we all
just took a block and did itmanually and it wasn't.
It wasn't that painful.
It could it have been automated?
100 should have been automated,probably, but we survived, you
know your tax dollars hard atwork I mean it's going well.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Six network engineers making a hundred thousand
dollars, so six hundred thousanddollars a year in salary.
Spending a week updating an iphelper address working for you
people.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
It's a public servant .
Okay, yeah, take the normalnumber minus 25 okay, exactly.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
But, kev, I'm right there with you, I, I get it like
it's gonna just I'm providing acounter yeah, yeah, no, no, and
I'm I'm completely agreeingthat it should have been on.
It's something that someone onthe team not me should have
known how to do, but not myproblem.
But until the day comes whereit's like a thousand that I have
to update and it just can't doit manually, that's the day

(34:25):
we're like, okay, I'm gonna lookat python and get some kind of
script going, but I need to beforced because same people in
general don't don't changeunless they have to like.
We resist change as as general,as homeo sapiens, we just don't
like change.
Um, so that's really, it'sreally what's going to come down
to.
And luckily I'm in the publicsector.
That is like 30 years behindthe industry, so I'm good, I'm

(34:48):
going to retire, I'll be good,but you guys, you guys are in
trouble.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
I was, I was forced as well.
So I agree with you a thousandpercent.
You know I had to be forcedinto it because I was going to
resist as long as I could.
I hope that you stay in thepublic sector and never explore
in Python.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
That Florida State pension ain't bad.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, frs Florida State Retirement System.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
I left FRS seven years and six months, six months
before my vesting.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
You got to be vested man, go back in, I can hook you.
I can hook you up with your jobat usf if you want.
I got some connections stillbut you know, you know, we'll
talk they don't pay well, butyou'll get your six months of uh
of frf I.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
I have the chief hr officer in my class, so
automation to put a to put a bowon this.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
What are you going to learn Python?
So?

Speaker 2 (35:46):
so this is so my Python, so my automation script.
I ran for Cisco Meraki.
I honestly never touched Pythonbefore.
It took me about what was it?
Six hours to write that, with alittle bit of Googling, a
little bit of stealing and,honestly, knowing HTML and
JavaScript and do some CodeAcademy for like six months.

(36:06):
I kind of knew the logic.
So when I saw this code onStack Overflow, I'm like all
right, I can steal that.
Ok, I know how to use that.
Ok, api call, I know how to usethat.
Let me grab that real quick.
And then I had it.
And then a little bit of peopleon discord saying, well, how

(36:28):
about add a qr code, add this?
And I was like all right,within six hours I had a maraki
script that rotate your yourwi-fi password and email you qr
code.
Yeah, I just honestly, it justtakes the getting shit done
mentality yeah that's all ittakes is just do it, don't be
afraid of it, just like yourrunning story, forrest Gump.
You know what I want to say.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
You know what I want to say.
If, if you can read a route mapor write a route map and
understand that logic, I don'tfind programming all that
different, at least in in aneasier thing.
Like I remember first lookingat route maps oh yeah, this is

(37:15):
my cell for, like network peoplewho hate coding Like if you can
understand a route map, routemaps are kind of little mini
programs of logic that are justrunning to do things with routes
and or tags or ACLs yourpolicy-based routes, like all
that stuff.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
It's just basic logic .

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Guy Chris Margetta used to work with the juniper.
He's like dude, look at the,look at the Cisco CLI that
you're in.
You're telling me you can'tprogram.
Like look at this mess.
Like this is all logic andcommands you're putting in.
But again in my head it wasjust different.
Like Kevin had said, you know,until you're forced, we're heavy
on time here, so let's try tomove it along here.

(37:52):
So you got a bunch of things inhere Alignment with business
processes, something I didn't doearly enough that I should have
.
Right, like what does thebusiness need?
And you know, I always thoughtI was the network and leave me
alone.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
I don't care about the business, which is the
dumbest thing to say, out loud.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
But like the network, it's not my problem, you do.
There's so much value there.
Von Sharp has said it for yearsand I just didn't get it until,
you know, a couple of years ago.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
I don't.
I think it's the old way ofthinking where, like you're an
IT person, you get in a cubicleDon't bother me, I'll be sitting
here doing my thing and I'mjust like dead to the world and
you just can't do it anymore.
Yeah, you got to be a businessperson.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Right, and again, I always have reasons, excuses,
whatever.
But like working in thesegigantic Fortune 100 companies
that are so siloed, there's justthis mentality, like I am so
separated I don't even touch theLAN because I'm a WAN guy,
because the place is so big andthere's tens of thousands of
devices for me to then feel likeI'm connected to the business

(38:49):
and I'm I mean, we are but Ijust felt so disconnected from
so different parts of theorganization technically, let
alone the business.
But you'll go far if you canget aligned with the business
and learn how they talk and seewhat's important to them and you
know it's really going to begood for your career.
Vxlan, it's everywhere, dearLord.
Evpn, vxlan, overlay all thethings right.
You got that in there.
Yeah, kev, you messing with anyof that?

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, we're in a transition right now for our
data center and we're startingto do VXLAN.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Cool, it's intense.
Right, it's a lot.
Yeah, it is, it's a whole lot.
It's awesome what it does, butman, yeah, the idea of not
having to span VLANs and allthat.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
It's super cool.
It's just a lot.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
I'm a wordsmith, I don't know.
It's a lot.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Sounds like.
Next time I'm in Tampa, dropoff bourbon at your house.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yes, exactly, I'm slowly, slowly draining it.
I really have to work.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
So we have.
We're getting close to time.
I guess we can go as long as wewant, but in the interest of
trying to stay somewhere aroundan hour here, there's two big
slides that I think we shouldhit, which is well, we might've
done this already.
Impact of cloud on networking,but we can maybe touch on some
of those points if you thinkthey're relevant.
And then the future.
I want to touch the futurebefore we're done here, and
we've been going about 50minutes, so let's say we have 10

(40:09):
minutes left.
Real quick DevOps mindset.
What does that mean?
Does that mean that you'resupposed to use automation tools
and GitHub?

Speaker 2 (40:17):
and.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
CICD workflows in your networking.
Is that what you're getting at?

Speaker 2 (40:21):
You can.
But DevOps mindset is it's notdeveloper and ops and separate
cubicles.
You're embedded in those teams,not only what your customers
need, your cellmates there in ITas well.
Right, I might say cubicle,cellmates, but just cubicle,
never come out there, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
No, I like that, I like cellmates.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
So the networking and the developers working kind of
together hand in hand, yeah,okay, that would be smart.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
So it might be a segue then, I don't know so the
old ways of doing it where youwore multiple hats, you were a
network person, you had nosystems, you had to know
everything, and then we saw kindof a separation of silos where
I'm a network person.
So are you seeing that it'skind of coming back now?

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yes, a hundred percent.
You're expecting to wear allthe hats again.
And I think honestly, if AI it'sjust going to be more prevalent
too.
You know we say the AI wordhere, but it's going to be more
prevalent and we'll, especiallythrough the cloud environment.
You kind of got to wear alittle bit developer hat and
work with them and you got toknow systems and networking,
because it also has to help youout and know the big picture.

(41:24):
Yeah, that's the best thing youdo to help your career out.
Don't just go down one path.
You need to know the wholepicture, otherwise you're
developing the silo right.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Be a generalist right Generalist, yeah, yeah, and
that's another pendulum thatseems to swing.
Like it was generalist and thenit was specialist and I guess
it's some great book about howbeing a generalist is like the
best thing you can do.
Um, you know right now, and Iforget what the heck it's called
, but it's.
It's a great book about that.
Um, and I try to do a littlebit of that in the data center,
because I was a WAN guy but wewere always talking to the app

(41:54):
and the server people.
So I got a server at home and Ilearned ESXi and started
spinning up VMs and trying tofigure out the vSwitching and I
wanted to learn more and moreabout just the ecosystem I was
in, besides just networking, andthere's so much to learn.
So, really quick, I guess,impact of cloud on networking.
I know we don't want to spend aton of time there, but what are

(42:15):
the highlights here that wehaven't touched on already?
I mean, I guess all I just saidwas cloud was hard and you said
, ah, it's not that hard, tooweak.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Well, I mean, how we got to the cloud changed
dramatically over the years.
Right, you know, it used to bejust the internet.
Now we have MPLS connections,Now you have what Megaport,
Alkira and all the other kind ofnetworking as a service
providers, as well in the space.
So how we get to networking incloud has gotten very verbose
and you have to pick the rightones for you.

(42:44):
So that kind of changed itquite a bit and also it goes
with your pendulum going fromfully in cloud going back to
data center.
That's the same long lines Likewhat Twitter went backwards
after Elon Musk back to datacenter for that's the same long
lines like what twitter wentbackwards after elon musk back
to data center for a lot ofthings right, and it's a
case-by-case scenario.
You know, sometimes you go fullcloud and realize why the hell

(43:04):
did I move it up there cost melike triple why?
Why did I do that right?
A lot of these things areanecdotal.
You don't know it's there untilit's in the cloud and then
you're like well, like I can runit cheaper back in office.
Or you missed the control, oryou built something so special
you can't run it on genericAzure or AWS machines.
You need something veryspecific.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Somebody say something about why people go to
cloud and I thought it wasinteresting.
I want to say it was MikeBouchon, but I could be
misquoting somebody.
I thought it said something tothe effect of like people know
now that the cloud is moreexpensive, so what you're paying
for is their operations right,you're paying for flexibility
and scalability, faster speed,flexibility but you're also
leveraging their operations,their operators, like their

(43:44):
people, right, you don't have to.
You're not doing hvac and andsmart hands and cabling and
generators and like if you'reyeah like that's just you, I, I
press a button, you, you do it.
You operate that network Right.
Um, yeah, it was just adifferent framing I hadn't
thought of before, um, but butit seems.
You know there was that wholerepatriation thing and I know

(44:06):
cloud people get all upset,especially the cables of clouds
guys.
When you say that like it wasone guy, I think it's more than
one company that likerepatriated.
But you know they went to cloud, it was super expensive, they
pulled back, but I guess hybridand that's something they'll
always say to right Hybrid'skind of like the way to go the
future.
That's where it is Right, causeI guess some apps make sense.
I wanted to ask you earlier andI we can cut it out if you

(44:28):
don't want to answer it, butwhen you said you guys moved a
bunch of your stuff to cloud,you guys moved a bunch of your
stuff to cloud.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
I wanted to ask, like , did you refactor your apps,
did you?
Just, I want to say some ofthem had to get refactored.
I remember we spent the appteam did herculean effort
refactoring like three, foursprints worth of stuff in one
night because I'm under theimpression if you don't refactor
your apps for the cloud, it'snot great it's.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
You're not leveraging the technology properly and
you're spending a ton of moneyjust to run monoliths somewhere
else.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
We had an old megalith monolithic application
and kind of had to refactor itand just didn't.
There's a lot of things thatweekend.
That was a fun weekend,Definitely, yeah.
Also, we're still refactoring alot of our code for just taking
advantage of all the new cloudstuff.
I can tell you I work with somegreat app dev guys who are just
forward thinking and on thecutting edge let's try this and

(45:19):
they're doing some great stuffand as a network engineer, I'm
doing every day hey, I need thisturned on this private endpoint
, this, that, this.
So they're moving at a fastpace.
We're moving at a fast pace,right behind them.
That's why the DevOps mentalityhas to be there.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
I think the speed that was the biggest thing I saw
in production when COVIDhappened COVID, you just said
COVID, covid I'm a littlestuffed up, Sorry.
When COVID happened, everybodywent home and our VPNs could not
.
I mean, we were getting kickedoff and couldn't join before all
that happened because our VPNinfrastructure wasn't robust
enough and built out enough.

(45:51):
And then everybody went homeand you couldn't get on at all
If you weren't on at like six inthe morning, signed in, like
you just weren't getting onuntil like after 12 when people
started lunching.
But I remember I don't know ifit took two nights, three like
whatever, it was basicallyovernight or like over two
nights.
They built all that capacityout in a cloud and it was all

(46:11):
back up and like it would havetaken us I mean the circuits we
would have needed and theequipment to order and rack and
stack and like I don't know howlong it would have taken us to
build that capacity to send thewhole company home and have VPN
access, but it was done in anight or two in public cloud and
that just that made animpression.
I'm like, oh wow, that was.
We couldn't have done that onprem fast.

(46:32):
You know, that's pretty awesome.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
So I got done that on prem yeah fast.
You know that's pretty awesome,so I got lucky.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I work for the government, so we never left the
office, all right.
So let's, let's hit this lastsection here, the future of
networking.
Right, and I love the firstbullet point here.
Is it a dying field?
Oh no.
Is network engineering still agood career to pursue, to get
into, to have a future in?
I publicly said once that Iprobably wouldn't tell my to get
into, to have a future in.
I publicly said once that Iprobably wouldn't tell my kids
to get into network engineering.
But I think that's when I wasout of work and trying to learn

(47:05):
programming.
I was very upset.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Do you take that back now?
I'm curious, Do you?
Do you regret saying that?

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Um, I regret saying a lot of things.
Um, tom Hollingsworth reframedit for me at nfd.
You know he said it's, it's not, it's not dying, but it's
shrinking.
He's like, listen, there'sstill cobalt programmers,
there's still mainframeoperators, like there's always
going to be a network.
Um, if you look at all thesoftware abstractions and
tooling and cloud and nai, nowright, like I mean, I've seen

(47:34):
tools that can do the work of 10network engineers with one at
former company you know softwarecompanies I've been at and and
that's that's a very lucrativespace to be as a software
company.
It's, it's, you know, kind ofimagine if I could come in as
this, as this, as a sales guy towhere you work.
I'm like, listen, I know yougot six guys spending you know
two weeks doing IP helperaddresses, but I got this killer

(47:58):
.
You know AI enabled automationthing.
I mean we could have done thatin 30 minutes with one button
click and you can get rid offive of those guys.
Like it's, it's such an easysell if it works and I've seen
it work.
And in wireless I'll say youcan connect the dots yourself,
but on what product that mightbe?
So I don't think it's dying,it's shrinking.
I don't know if you know partof it's thankless and there's

(48:22):
maintenance windows and on calland you're always getting beat
up Like it's a really hardphysical and emotional job
sometimes.
Like I'd much rather my kids.
I don't know what I want mykids to do, but you always want
your kids to have a better lifethan you think, right, like my
dad was a cop and he wanted meto go to college to not be a cop
.
So like, all right, I'm anetwork engineer, I'm not
getting shot at.
That's good, um, but yeah, Idon't know.

(48:43):
I don't have a good answer toyour question.
If, if my kids love technologyand the networking bug bit them,
go for it.
But I, you know, I don't evenknow how many network engineers
we're going to have.
I mean, my kids are seven and10.
Like, in 10 years is it goingto be?
I think the BLS, the Bureau ofLabor Statistics, whatever it's
called?
I mean, I think it's stillgrowing.

(49:04):
It's not going away necessarily, but I think the growth is way
lower than it used to be.
I mean, listen, we're notbuilding the internet out
anymore, right, like it's allthere.
So I don't know if it hasanything to do with that too,
like are we building a ton ofnetworking, new networking
infrastructure anymore, like Idon't know.
But is it a dying field?

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Nick, I mean this is no, I say no, like I put on
there for you but and talk tothe group.
But I don't think it's a dyingfield, I think.
But, uh, I don't think it's adying field.
I.
I think it's hard to attractpeople because cyber security is
a sexy thing right now.
Ai is new, sexy, so cyber andai are the sexiest, shiniest
thing.
Right, and people don'tunderstand.

(49:44):
They go oh, my first job'sgonna be cyber security and I'm
like the hell, it isn't okay,let's talk about that, right,
and I do that first day class.
All my students say, oh, whatdo you want to be?
I, I want to be in cyber.
I said you're not Okay.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Next, Crush your dreams right away.
I like it.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
And why do you say they're not?
Because my understanding isthey're going to secure a
network that they don'tunderstand how it operates.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
They don't know systems, they don't know network
, they don't know app dev RightTo get those cyber roles.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
They need more than three hours in a networking
class to have the foundationalknowledge.
Like a cybersecurity boot camp.
Two weeks, $9,000.
You make $200,000 in salary.
It's nonsense.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
How do you put together a network that you've
never set up yourself?
We all know how each other oneof us probably can go behind
each other and say, okay, I cansee how they fucked up there or
they did action here, right.
How can you be a red teamerwithout knowing the normal
vulnerabilities in business?

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Cyber's not an entry-level job in general,
right I?
Don't think it is, maybe youcan come out of college doing it
.
But the people I know in cybercut their teeth in networking
first.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Or they were hackers themselves.
I mean, they always weretinkering or something.
They're tinkerers.
That's the old school 90s, 80s,computer thought.
Right, and I don't think it's adying field, I just think it's
just out of the spotlight.
Right with the plumbers.
But cloud helps us become cloudengineers.
Now we're cloud networkengineers.
We're you know they really justchanged us the guy who fixed

(51:15):
your internet.
You know, that's the men andwomen who fixed your internet.
That's who we are right.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
I'm glad you said that, because the people that
pivoted to cloud seem to bedoing better in their career,
across multiple metrics, thanthe people who stayed on prem.
I don't know if that's just thefew people I know who went from
NetEng to cloud.
I mean, they're making more.
It's a sexier job.
They're always going to have ajob.

(51:40):
Well maybe not right, I don'tknow.
Again, these are all justassumptions I make.
Like, cloud is where everybodywants to be.
Everybody goes.
They'll spend To your point.
A company will just spendwhatever the hell they got.
We got to go to cloud Sign thechecks and it'll take a year or
two to figure out.
Oh hell, this is superexpensive, yikes.
And it'll probably take anotheryear or two to repatriate some

(52:01):
stuff on-prem.
Do you see the cloud fervor?

Speaker 2 (52:10):
pulling back at all?
I don't see it pulling back.
I see it different lights.
It can pull back on something.
It all depends, the famouswords IT, it depends.
It depends on how big you are,it depends on how small you are,
it depends on howforward-thinking your boss is
and also how non-buzzworthy orbuzzworthy, whatever, your

(52:31):
leadership team is.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
But if you're a network engineer and you want to
future-proof your career, cloudShould you pick cloud.
Right, I mean simple.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Get your.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
AWS, yeah, yeah, like just painting broad strokes
here, like not that you have to.
If you're worried, kevin's notworried Public sector, you're
good, you'll be there forever.
And I mean that with all loveand respect.
Like that's awesome I respect,like that's awesome, I love that

(52:59):
kind of security in the jobthat's my research field.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
You know they don't give enough public sector it
guys enough credit.
That's why that's my wholeresearch papers okay, yeah, yeah
.
So yeah, I don't think it is.
And quantum computing come upup the corner here, that that's
a scary thing and we could talkprobably about 45 minutes on
quantum, on how scary encryptionbreaking that could be, but but
also wasn't to our networks,right?
You know who knows what that'sgoing to look like in the future
?

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Do we want to do?
We want to say the third dirtyword?
We said cloud, we saidautomation, ai, baby.
So you know, as I'm trying tofuture-proof my skillset, I'm
learning some programming, somebasic.
You, you know python and githuband stuff like that.
Um, I'm reading an llm book thatphil gervasi turned me on to.

(53:42):
Um, because I I don't reallyunderstand the underlying.
Like, if you're using an aitool, like I'm the kind of
person that like, well, how,like, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
What is it doing?
Like, how is it?
So?
I'm because it might be theengineer in me, so I, I'm trying
to learn the machine learningkind of stuff underneath,

(54:02):
because I think by the time yousee the AI tool, it's just too
much Like, can you learn AI?
I don't know.
I think you have to learn ML.
It's actually doing machinelearning and they, I think they
call it it ai and I don't knowenough about it.
But how would you study ai?
I mean, you're dr nick here,like you know, is is it?
Is it something we study yet oris it just?

Speaker 2 (54:22):
oh, there is a lot of papers on ai.
In fact, half my class aredoing ai, half the classes
before that.
Most professors are ai people.
It's, it's out there, right,because it it's not only the new

(54:57):
sexy, it's the new calculator,right?
So before you're in schooltaking calculus, you, you know,
I put this number upside down,the code checks out, right.
I think you know it's a tool,it's a great tool if you're
willing to use it, but also notlet yourself abuse it it, but
also not let yourself abuse it.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
I've seen it do some pretty cool stuff.
I was I mean I was anti-ai fora while because I'm like it's
gonna take a hard job.
This is bad, and I know kev,he's rolling his eyes, but then
I started using it.
I started using it.
I'm like, oh, wow, like this islike.
If you use it, like you'resaying nick, if you use it the
right way, like if you want tobrainstorm as an example, like
oh my god, it's amazing.
If you want to like generate alist, or if you want to like
rewrite something or like evenfor, even like for job

(55:38):
interviews as an example, youcan feed it a job description,
feed it your resume and say, hey, help me prepare for this
interview.
And like the questions it spitsout they may or may not ask me,
but they're things I wasn'tthinking of, they're different
angles.
It gets me kind of in thatconversation with the
interviewer before I go in, likejust one use case of like wow,
this is amazing.
Not to mention the networkinguse cases.

(56:00):
I know I've said it beforepublicly, but I was messing
around in SR Linux and they havea I forget what the branded
thing is, but it's a chat GPTagent in there and you can talk
in the CLI in natural languageand it'll tell you anything you
need to know, and it gave me allthe commands I needed to do
what I was trying to do.
It was much more elegant thanthe question mark and other CLIs

(56:21):
.
I've worked in right Liketrying to find the code and the
syntax and the higher you knowthe folder I need to be in the
what the hell I'm doing?
So I love the.
I love what I've seen so far.
Are we going to become tooreliant on it?
I don't know.
If we have AI tools that aregoing to do the work of 10 and
one person can do it and nowthey're just in GUIs, like you
were saying, kev, what's goingto happen when all hell breaks

(56:42):
loose and the building's burningdown and the AI's on fire?

Speaker 3 (56:46):
I'm personally really looking forward to AI taking
over everything.
I'm in the public sector again,so in in my world, right, I
want the ai to come in numberone.
It's it's in the public sector.
It's we don't fire anyone,right.
There's no layoffs, um, unlessyou like, break a law or do

(57:08):
something really legal, thenwell then, we'll fire you.
But typically you know it'shard to get fired from the
public sector, um, but and it'salso hard to get add people to
your team, right, add new lines.
It's hard to to get newreoccurring funds for salaries
but generally work lean.
So like, yeah, exactly, andyou're lean and you're never
getting out, but it's reallyeasy, for some reason, to buy

(57:30):
things.
We have a certain amount offunds we have to spend before
the end of the year.
We have to buy stuff, or elsewe lose it Right, and if we lose
it, we don't get it back nextyear.
So we have to use these funds.
So buying AI, paying tools,buying software, whatever to
help the few people that we dohave their you know the job to
do it better Sounds like amazingto me.
I'm not worried about losing myjob too.

(57:52):
I'm not worried about layoffsor anything like that.
I just want my job to be easier.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, so and public sector.
I can see that I mean again.
And also you can't get firedfrom public sector.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
I was I feel like that's a story there.
I want to hear it, but I don'tknow if we have time for it
right now.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
No, that's probably about 30 minutes.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
And you know what, meet me at a sports bar down
there.
Yeah, I mean, I'm actuallygoing to USF tomorrow for lunch
for my old co-workers, so maybeI'll see you there.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
I'll tell you how good the systems are going and
they're leveraging AI in thetesting.
I have a buddy who's an airlinepilot and in the military and
he's telling me that our kidswill be flying in pilotless
commercial jets.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
That scares the crap out of me commercial jets.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
that's good, so like 20, but it's how good we like.
And again, a car isn't a plane,but we have driverless cars.
I mean they occasionally runpeople over, but they're a thing
, they're working right.
There's people flying down thehighway at 80 miles an hour
without their hands on a road,with like an auto driving car in
some senses.
And when, when, when you talk toa, an airline pilot, and they

(58:56):
tell you how automatedeverything is already, like
there's not much to do if youdon't want to do things like to
your point, kev, like their jobhas been very simplified and it
safety has come as a result ofthat, because all these systems
and checklists and so theairline industry there's,
there's, there's like a lot tolearn there.

(59:29):
But to the point we saidearlier, when the shit hits the
fan and things get bad and thesystems fail and bad things are
happening in the plane, I reallylike having a human up there or
that network expert who knowslike, oh yeah, you know
everything's down, but I knowwhat to do, as opposed to like
you know the tools are failing,what do I do?
The plane's going down.
As opposed to like you know thetools are failing, what do I do
?
The plane's going down Like Idon't know if I'll ever get in a
plane without a human up there.
Because that's a lot of trust toput in software in my
estimation, but it's just anexample of how far, like where
this stuff could go.
Like can we automate networkswith AI and make our jobs easier

(59:52):
?
Absolutely, Maybe, Becausethere's roadmaps at Boeing to
make pilotless commercialairliners.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Yeah, but I feel like a plane is easier to understand
than some users.
That's really what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
And applying AI, especially to a lean team like
Kevin's talking about right.
So if it can take away 20% ofthe minutia that he has to deal
with, his team can actuallyinnovate instead of struggling
to tread water, and that'sreally where I see AI helping
out.
It's okay, take care of some ofthe boring stuff, or some of
the stuff that takes away mytime, and let me innovate and

(01:00:27):
iterate.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Yeah, we have projects that we can't keep up
with because we're doinghousekeeping, because we have
technical debt that we're tryingto keep up with.
Oh, technical debt that we'retrying to keep up with when we
have buildings that areliterally being constructed,
that we have to have newnetworks for, and we're just
drowning in work.
So it's the BS that we don'twant to do.
But to your point, andy, I feellike man.

(01:00:49):
No matter how far technologyadvances, users are still going
to be users.
I can't say that politely, I'lljust say they're going to be
users.
Like I get tickets for firewallrules, or like I want you know
this application to go here.
Well, what ports do you want?
What sort of?
What's the destination?
They don't know any of that.
Just make it work, make itmagic, and ai, no matter how
good ai is, they're not gonna beable to figure that out without

(01:01:09):
a lot of interaction, a lot ofyou know, looking at things and
digging into it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of looking at
things and digging into it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean a lotof good things.
Ai can do with accessibilitytoo, and stuff and helping
everything out there.
I mean it's going to be a greattool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
I want to circle back .
So we're going to wrap up here.
But I want to circle back toKev's question earlier because
I've had more time to thinkabout it.
But what I tell my kids to goin network engineering right, I
mean, that's what this wholeepisode is about is, like you
know, is this a good careerfield.
What do you need to know?
What do you need to do?
Like as much as I might takeshots at it, like networking has
been so good to me I wasclimbing ladders, getting

(01:01:46):
physically and emotionallybeaten up every day as a cable
guy for 400% less money, and youknow, and network engineering
has given me such a great life,not just financially, but I
really enjoy the work.
I'm still fascinated by it.
Like I'm talking to, you know,the ultra ethernet council guys

(01:02:06):
soon and they're like creating anew transport stack and like
I'm still like in love with thisstuff.
Like wait, wait.
They're like redefiningethernet, like that is insane.
And when you look at whatthey're doing, like oh my God,
I'm amazed how smart people are.
They can like right.
Like I'm just trying to figureout what they created.
They just sat around like we'regoing to make stuff.

(01:02:28):
So I mean, I'm still in lovewith networking.
It's a great career field.
Um depend, you know, like, likeall of us, like when you come in
and like kev, you said likeeasier, right, like you want it
to be easier.
It was easier in 2012 when Igot my ccna because, ony, it was
route switch and that wasenough and I didn't need to know
python and I didn't need toknow cloud and I didn't need to
know ai and I didn't need towork with developers and I

(01:02:51):
didn't need a cicd pipeline andgithub and I didn't need to CICD
pipeline and GitHub and Ididn't need to have a GitHub
repo in my LinkedIn just to looklike a real, like it's just so
crazy that every five to 10years there's three more
technology stacks we have tolearn for the same salary that
we had in 2012 when it was justaround Switch, like you know.
So that's kind of that oldgrumpy like urgh, leave me alone

(01:03:11):
, I don't want to learn any newstuff.
Like me alone, I don't want tolearn any new stuff.
Like this is hard, but it's agreat, you know it's, it's a
great career.
I can't really.
I mean, what, what do you got?
Like would you?
What would you tell your kidslike what do you think about the
career?

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
me or nick both whoever?
Kevin, you go first, you havekids um, yeah, so I have a 14
year old and a 12 year old and Iwould my number one, my
daughter.
She's not technology, she's asmuch as I've tried to get her
into tech.
I want a female engineer in thefamily.
She just has no interest in it.
So I'm starting to give up.
But my son is into video gamesand technology and I would not

(01:03:47):
tell him to go into networking.
I would tell him to go toprogramming, do some kind of
programming, just because I feellike that field is much more
open.
I mean just because I feel likethat field is much more open,
like the opportunities are muchmore available there.
With less knowledge, with lessbackground that you need, I feel
like the entry-level jobs thereare just easier to get.

(01:04:07):
But I'm curious, nick, I knowyou said you don't have kids and
stuff.
But say, if you were a 17,18-year-old kid graduating high
school, what job would you get?
Or and what steps would youtake to get there in the next,
like three or four years afterthat?

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Well, I tell 18 year olds this every semester, so I
actually have 25 percentenrollment rate with women.
So that's my highest enrollmentrate this year.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
So I need to get my daughter to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
So you're saying yeah , I mean I don't know why, but
like it was great to see youknow, all three of my classes,
25 percent out of 20, 24students were female.
My guys Great is, 25% out of 24students we're female.
I'm like guys great.
Thanks for showing up.
Let's have fun.
Now let's talk about technology.
Let's make you all nerds and bythe end of it they might know
some networking.
Most of them know movies and TVshows they should watch for

(01:04:53):
being nerds.
But honestly, programming isnever a wrong thing.
But what I tell people is nolittle programming, no little
programming, no littlenetworking, no little systems.
You got to find out what makesyour brain itch.
You got to find the itch andscratch it.
It could be programming, itcould be networking, some parts
of programming.
You don't get a good feedbackloop where you build it and you

(01:05:14):
see it.
Some people need to see itright or touch it.
Tactile Networking has atactile component to it.
Unless you, unless you're acloud network, right, then you
never get to see the switch goblinky, bleaky, right.
You know, I like be networkingbecause I can see the switch.
I got cables, I I knew how towork on it like you're working
on an engine right and I talkedmy switches like their children.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
all right, honey what are you doing today?
You know, like, what's going onhere, right, that's weird yeah,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Yeah, talk to him sometimes.
You know, the firewall went outthe other day and I was like,
come on, honey, what's wrong?
What's going on over here?
So honestly, I would tell themthey got to figure out what
makes them, what makes themhappy, like I'd say, networking
only because it's fun.
It's always a Rubik's cube tosolve.
But so is cyber right and itcan lead you into that path.
Right App can lead you intocyber.

(01:05:59):
A lot of things lead you intocyber, which I have fun in,
cyber a lot.
But.
But networking, my default mode,my factory reset button for me,
is management and networkingright.
I've been managing for many,many years, more, more years in
retail actually, no, I thinkpretty even between retail and
um it.
But networking has always beena fun thing for me because it's

(01:06:20):
I make.
I can make something work.
I get a feedback instantly hey,this work, ping done, no, ping,
Okay.
Whatever Blame, dns, pcap.
So that's, that's my take on it.
You got to find what motivatesyou, and it may not be
networking or may just be wifinetworking.
Are they teaching networking inyour college?
A hundred percent.
We have a lot, of a lot ofswitches.

(01:06:45):
We actually have a lab.
You can take switches home.
Right, you actually can signout switches and routers take
them home um.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
We do all hands on moving networking from like
computer science.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
No, we are, I don't know.
We we doubled down.
We actually added pythonscripting for our networking
courses.
Cool, right, um, we have a hellof a cyber security lab, but
you have to take networkingfirst.
You can't go the cyber courseswithout networking first is this
um, is this a computer sciencetrack?

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
is this through neticad like, what do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
yeah, so we have we have neticad built in.
So four courses are neticad.
You know, cisco, one, two,three, four go through neticad,
right, but there's like fourdifferent degrees that kind of
come through networking.
Even our biomed students takesome networking.
Wow, right, because theirbiomed equipment may be on the
network.
So we still have it.

(01:07:33):
We just launched an ai degreeand I think we just launched a
bachelor's in cyber.
But we've been always kind ofretooling some of the higher end
Cisco, the networking degrees.
I think at one point we hadFortinet.
We do VMware as well forcertain things.
We used to have NSX lab, soit's all hands-on.
We're a state college, we'renot university, so we're not
theory.
And I always crap onuniversities like, hey, you're

(01:07:55):
teaching theory to networking,throw a switch in their face.
So up here I pick on UNFbecause we have University of
North Florida.
So I always make the joke noteven a joke interview question
You're next to somebody else andyou can't talk to a server.
What's the first thing you do?
The UNF students are like well,I'm going to check the ACLs and
the routing and the FSCJ thestate college first.

(01:08:17):
I'm like, well, I'm trying toping the server first, right,
check the cable, right.
So the theory nothing replaceshands-on.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Nothing replaces it.
You see a problem in the futurewith these things coming
together.
Older network engineersretiring the people with that
old school institutionalknowledge of how the protocols
are working.
Newer engineers not knowing,not having the experience with
the non-abstractions right Withthe let's say they're the
ClickOps people, right, they'redealing with all the software

(01:08:46):
and they're less knowledgeableon what the older people knew.
And then you know, the needs ofthe network keep increasing.
There's more and more devices,there's more and more people.
So it's kind of this weirdconfluence of, like increasing
demand on the network, lessskilled, older engineers that
have that really deep knowledgeand the people that have come in

(01:09:08):
to replace them again, this isa generalization and somebody's
going to yell at me, but likethey don't have that deep
knowledge, They've come up in atime that it's all software to
find this and ClickOps, thatLike.
Are we headed for disasterBecause there's not going to be
deep experts when bad thingshappen?

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
I'd love to say no, but it's always a risk.
I think it's a risk in anyindustry, right?
When it happens, it's all onesentence You're going to learn
today, son.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
It's what's going to?

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
happen.
You got to learn today.
You're going to grow up realfast.
What do you think, Kevin?

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
I don't know if it's my bubble of people that I'm
surrounded by, but this jobattracts people who like to
figure stuff out, and I thinkit's that question isn't giving
enough credit for those peoplewho are just learning the GUI.
When it does eventually break,those same people, hopefully
we'll then look at, you know,the white pages.
We'll start looking like,digging into it and figuring out

(01:10:01):
hey, this button that I usuallypress does this, and now it's
not what the heck happened.
And I think that mentality isthe core of our job, that's the
core of who we are as techpeople, and that trait will
won't go away as time goes on.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Reverse engineering, something to figure something
out.
Now, as long as you have againpeople that want to GSD, get
stuff done right or networkingis the perfect spot for them
right.
That's why full sun, fridays,you know, ask for permission.
Don't ask for permission, askfor forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Kev, I think you nailed it.
We all have that curiosity,that deep-seated curiosity, that
need to tinker.
We want to know how things work.
So yeah, even if the toolingthat we've used is easier in
some sense, you're right, thepeople that are attracted to
networking want to know howthings are working, and if it
breaks, you're going to figureit out.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
So yeah, that's a really good I mean, I'm kind of
in my mid career.
You know I'm 40.
So I'm far away from retirementand far away from my beginnings
.
I'm kind of in the middle.
And so I see people who are 20years older than me who are
leaving the industry, and I alsosee the kids coming in who are
network admins.
And the kids coming in arehungry.
They have that hunger.

(01:11:12):
They want to figure stuff out,they want to get their hands
dirty, they want to get underthe hood and look at the stuff.
And I'm getting to the pointwhere I'm getting too old for
this crap.
You know mentality where, like,I want to spend time with my
kids, I want to do this kind ofstuff.
It's hard for me to to spendhours doing it at night, but
they're still in it, they'restill doing that and that's
where I was 20 years ago.
But that's the mentality thatthose people will be.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
You know they'll be under the hood 20 years from now
do you feel that those kids aresmarter, like they're coming in
computer science or they'reprogramming, or like do they
know more than we knew 20 yearsago?
That would be my guess thatthey're, that they're smarter in
a sense, but your face issaying no, smarter is a hard
word you know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
It's like yeah, that's the part I do have more
knowledge, like a variety ofknowledge Probably.
I mean Nick would be the expertthere.
I would say probably, butsmarter is a hard word to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Yeah, do they have more skill like technical skills
?

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
They know technology.
But, honestly, you can'treplace hunger and that's a
learned trait from behavior andthat's what I look for for
interviewing.
Are you hungry?
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
That's the biggest thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
You got to be hungry.
And when I find somebody who'shungry I don't care they don't
have CCNA or nothing I'm likeyou know what?
You're my guy, that's it.
You got it out that you'rehungry.
Let's do this.
I can mold you like clay ifyou're hungry you're gonna
figure it out 100.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
My wife has a saying I love.
She says you can't teach hustle.
She, no, you can't.
She played basketball at a highlevel and she's coached people
and like you're, you're notgonna.
You're not gonna get somebodyto like chase that ball down and
jump on the floor, like it'seither in you or it's not and
it's hunger.
It's the same thing if you'rehungry and you're gonna go after
it.
Like kev said, if you gotpeople that are hungry and want
to learn, I mean that's the best.

(01:12:50):
I think they're the best peopleto have around.
They're gonna bust their assand learn things.
They.
They want it right, they wantit.
Um, nick and kevin, thanks forbeing here.
It's a really good conversation.
If you're in networking or youwant to get into networking,
just internalize that you'realways going to have to be
learning something new.
You're never going to know itall and every five to 10 years
there's going to be a new sexything that you're going to have

(01:13:11):
to learn.
These are things that Irealized lately and I'm like,
okay, there is no finish line.
But if you're hungry, if you'recurious, if you love technology
that's supposed to be one ofthe great things about being
here.
So just don't burn out anddon't expect it to get easy.
You can check out our link tree.
It has links to pretty much allof our stuff and the reason I
bring this up is we have aserver called it's all about the

(01:13:34):
journey discord server.
Why I love it so much isthere's about 3000 people in
there and they're all helpingeach other.
So there's a CCNP study grouphappening now, there's a CCNA
study group happening now andthere are just a bunch of others
, an automation group in there.
They they were working on someproblems today.
So if you need a community, ifyou want a place, it's free,

(01:13:55):
come in, say hi, hang out.
You can find that link at alink tree.
Forward slash art of NetEng, aswell as a bunch of other stuff
in there the Cables of Cloudpodcast We've got some merch
that we haven't updated inforever, but all the links to
our socials.
But check out the Linktree,check out Mr Kevin Nance on
TikTok at Adjacent Node.
He's always creating amazingcontent.
Nick, where can folks find youif they want to get in touch,

(01:14:19):
learn more, see what you'redoing?

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Mostly my LinkedIn.
Honestly, I do have Twitter,really more Twitter.
I kind of follow people on.
I don't really post much onthere, I need to get better at
it, but I kind of curated right,but 100%.
My LinkedIn website too as well, which I just got the domain.
Today I finally registereddomain, so we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Awesome.
Well, thanks so much forjoining it was so, we'll see.
Awesome.
Well, thanks so much forjoining us.
Great conversation as always,and we'll see you next time on
the Art of Network Engineeringpodcast.
Hey everyone, this is Andy.
If you like what you heardtoday, then please subscribe to
our podcast and your favoritepodcatcher.

(01:14:59):
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,
where we post all of our shownotes, blog articles and general
networking nerdery.
You can also see our prettyfaces on our YouTube channel

(01:15:21):
named the Art of NetworkEngineering.
Thanks for listening.

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