[AusNOG] Work experience in networking/telecoms/DCs? Getting my foot in the door?

[Cameron Ferdinands]

+1 to Macca.

I'll share my experience as someone getting started in this industry.
Since I think we have a lot in common.

I originally started in the PIPE NOC, and was extremely lucky to be
hired and reported to some great people (Chris Pollock & Alex West).
Customer service is what will get you into the industry, and a
willingness to learn and extreme paranoia for making mistakes on the
network will keep you in a job (causing outages is not a great way to
get started).

Make sure to meet as many people as possible, as you will work with
these people for years and years to come (It's a small industry).
Attitude is infectious.

My biggest piece of advice? Self-learning and a motivation will do
more then a TAFE/Uni degree will ever do. The smartest people I've met
in Networking have all been self taught. Make sure you remember that
when you go for your first interview.

<plug>

Amazon.com is hiring for Network Engineers in Sydney! If you are
interested in working on one of the biggest networks in the world
please let me know!
http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/269255/-amazon-web-services-network-engineer

</plug>

We promise not to ask you questions like "What you would do if you
were stuck in a blender, underwater, with square-man hole covers made
of pennies and if you were the size of the empire state building. How
would you escape?"


On 21 December 2014 at 18:13, McDonald Richards
<mcdonald.richards at gmail.com> wrote:
> Customer service skills will get you further in the networking industry than
> you can imagine. Don't be ashamed to work on the front lines even though you
> have a piece of paper. It is an invaluable experience that will pay off
> exponentially in your later career as well. If you're in customer service
> somewhere that grows talent from within and you have the aptitude, you will
> be noticed. This period of your career is not forever.
>
> Aim to use your combined customer service and technical skills to land a job
> in a NOC. One where you are empowered to do as much as you can to fix
> something. Ask everyone everything and learn as much as you can. The people
> you start work with have seen and fixed a lot more things than you even if
> you think you are smarter. Take advantage of their experience. If you can't
> figure something out and someone else fixes it, ask them how they did it.
> Try to understand what you missed.
>
> Read all the things. Then read some more.
>
> Good luck.
>
> Macca
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 10:10 AM, <r_jones at netspace.net.au> wrote:
>>
>> Hi guys. I've been perusing the list on and off for a fair few months now,
>> and this is my first time posting here (or to any mailing list at all!
>> Forums have spoiled us kids it seems), so please forgive me if my posting
>> technique/etiquette is not quite right, or even if this question is not
>> quite the scope of the list, and I'll try not to prattle on too much, but
>> here goes...
>>
>> I'm 21, fresh out of a 12 month TAFE Networking Diploma that... could have
>> ended better than it did, if I'm honest. Have had a few personal issues and
>> some rather nasty illness this year, and budget and equipment cuts to my
>> campus towards the end of the year only made things worse. I simply ran out
>> of time.
>>
>> Anyway, I'm also studying a CCNA which I am about halfway through and am
>> plugging away at at home, however my resume is quite still bare, having
>> never had a job anywhere in I.T. before, and I'm trying to get my foot in
>> the door. It has been suggested by a few people, some of them rather
>> respectable in their fields, that I look at work experience or volunteering
>> just so I can fill my resume up with *something*, and so I can gain some
>> experience as well since it seems that even entry level mop pushing jobs
>> require 6 months of mop pushing experience. Where do you start?
>>
>> But that seems to be the question wherever I turn - where do I start? How
>> do I get my foot in the door? How do I know if that's the door I should be
>> putting my foot into? Where is the door? Etc, etc.
>>
>> So I figure, based on previous advice, that I should look at work
>> experience or volunteering my time to gain some experience. But this still
>> presents that pesky question for me - where do I start? And another
>> standout, what companies would allow work experience kids? I realize very
>> well that not everyone is thrilled with the idea of a kid waltzing into
>> their company for a couple of weeks, finding out how everything works in the
>> pursuit of eventual employment somewhere, and this I accept, but hey, we all
>> have to start somewhere, I guess.
>>
>> If you're still with me (I apologize for the length of this post), I think
>> now is the time to explain the fields I'm most interested in and why.
>>
>> In three (or nine) words: I love networks. I love infrastructure. I love
>> datacenters.
>>
>> To be a bit more verbose, I love the very concept of it. How the internet
>> itself functions at a basic level, how complex and intricate network and
>> telecommunications infrastructure can be, is always something that has
>> fascinated me. I want to be at the heart of it, and yet I'm also one for
>> details. From the NOCs to the last mile, I love it all. Perhaps I'm
>> idealizing too much, but if you were to ask me what I see myself doing in 5
>> or 10 years, this paragraph is pretty much it. I love helping to set up LAN
>> parties when I get the opportunity to do so (the infrastructure is actually
>> quite impressive to my untrained eyes. 10Gb trunks to edge switches and 40Gb
>> stacks between core switches - a lot of data gets shuffled around at LANs!)
>>
>> To be honest, I'm not even quite sure what the job description of what I
>> eventually want to do is. But, as you can probably tell, I like big things.
>> But I like to pay attention to the small things, too. I love the idea of
>> overseeing the operation of datacenters or enterprise networks or
>> telecommunications infrastructure, but also analysing and troubleshooting
>> when things go wrong. Finding out what went wrong, why it went wrong,
>> devising the most elegant way to fix the problem, and making sure it doesn't
>> go wrong again. Call it morbid, but I love analysing outages (as much as I
>> can with publicly available information) and knowing what went wrong, why,
>> what was done to correct the problem and perhaps even what (if any)
>> preventative measures were employed to prevent it from happening again.
>>
>> I think you get the idea at this point!
>>
>> I think I've droned on quite enough, but I would love to hear any and all
>> of your suggestions as to how/where I could get my foot in the door of the
>> networking scene, because while I would be interested in roles like
>> sysadmin, networking seems to be where my heart is set, and always has been,
>> really.
>>
>> If pertinent, I'm more than happy to link my current resume, as bare as it
>> may be, but I did notice that the AusNOG charter said no attachments, so I'm
>> not totally sure how the best way to go about this would be.
>>
>> Thanks for your considerable time! I look forward to hearing what you guys
>> have to say! It's been a pleasure to read this mailing list when I can, I
>> just hope my babbling doesn't impact on the pleasure of other readers too
>> much. :)
>>
>> Thanks again,
>>
>> Rory.
>>
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