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

Mon Dec 22 09:45:31 EST 2014

+1 to advice from Cameron and Macca.

Much like the story everyone has reported, I too started working on a help desk for network operator Peter Vaskess of Netlink Connect (hi Peter if you still read this list).

He taught me I knew very little about an area I thought I knew a lot in and besides his bootcamp, contacts and meeting people led to more opportunities.

I strongly suggest you finish your CCNA even if you never intend to work on IOS. My career has been largely Junos focused but the CCNA is a well structured (and very tough introductory) to networking. It also doesn’t include crap like AppleTalk and IPX like it used to :) 

I also recommend you get yourself across SP/DC architecture (basically learn how an MPLS network works and what a fabric based data centre looks like) and pick a coding language you like (Python is a goodie). Whether SDN is a thing now or later, being able to code will be an extremely valuable tool going forward and enable you to be one of the cool kids when it comes to automation.

I am not tertiary qualified but I’ve been able to adapt and be diligently autodidactic, keeping myself abreast of new technology and position my skill set so it suits what the market needs. That’s been my key to success and progression. Also contacts, did I mention contacts? Speak to everyone. Introduce yourself. Become a LinkedIn whore. Seriously. LinkedIn. Important. 

Helpdesk is a great start but you’ll quickly want to move on from there. 

Network Engineering is a fantastic and exciting profession that is far better supported and more interesting than it has ever been (I’m relatively young in terms of my career and when I started out 15 years ago there was little if any study you could do that was well structured outside of the Cisco program). We’ve moved beyond routers, switches and being CLI jokeys to being appreciated as the guys who help companies in a meaningful way across a broad range of environments.

It’s also why I become a Sales (Systems) Engineer. I get to do all that but I consult with different clients every day to work through their issues to help them be successful. 

> On 22 Dec 2014, at 9:31 am, Cameron Ferdinands <cameron at jferdinands.com> wrote:
> 
> +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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>>> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
>>> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>>> 
>> 
>> 
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