[AusNOG] Job: Head of Network Operations - NEXTDC - SydneyC

[Cameron Ferdinands]

+1 I wrote out this long reply but this pretty much.... nail....
head.. Especially about "jack of all trades" fitting into large
networks well, very well. When I look around this is a commonality of
our best people.

> Apply for positions at your dream company, even if you think you might not cut it. Many/most of my colleagues never thought they'd get the job, but did.

Absolutely, what do you have to lose? Worst case you get a job offer
to present to your boss for that raise.

The other note, virtualization of network equipment has never been
easier, and if you run out of compute there's plenty of that on tap
now (<shameless plug> AWS </shameless plug>) if you want those 400
routers, that's within your reach for less then $50 for a couple of
hours. -- If you have issues getting $50 together for AWS, do let me
know.


On 22 February 2015 at 14:02, Ben Buxton <bb.ausnog at bb.cactii.net> wrote:
>
> I will chime in here, I've interviewed well over a hundred network engineer
> candidates for Google (hi Phil!). Some personal thoughts here...
>
> On Sun Feb 22 2015 at 9:14:36 AM Skeeve Stevens
> <skeeve+ausnog at theispguy.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm seeing a massive amount of foreign application these days (90%) but
>> equally missing relevant experience and the certifications rarely seem to be
>> as 'solid' as locals.
>>
>> What strategies are Google/AWS using to find good candidates locally - if
>> you don't mind telling us?
>
>
> I think I've found your problem.
>
> 90+% of the world's network engineers live outside Australia, so it only
> makes sense that you will get a substantial number of applications from
> overseas.
>
> My experience tells me the following generalisations (there are exceptions):
>
> - Certs are a poor signal that someone may be a good candidate. Candidates
> with and without certs are equally likely to perform well in a technical
> interview and job. All it tells me is that they can memorise and rattle off
> the vendor literature. In fact, I tend to find that those with large cert
> counts are particularly poor candidates as they seem to lack actual
> experience and cant work through oddball real-life problems.
>
> - The location of a candidate has no correlation with how good they are.
> There are equally good candidates from around the world. You need to seek
> locally first to get a 457 i think, but there's only 1% of candidates
> locally.
>
> - Candidates who have worked in large companies can often have very narrow
> experience due to siloing. They may have just touched the firewalls, or the
> access side, or the peering edge. Whereas often candidates from smallish
> companies/networks often have had to be "jack of all trades" and their
> dealing with knock-on effects across infrastructure mean they can quickly
> become brilliant engineers at large networks.
>
> So by excluding (or strongly biasing against) foreign candidates, those
> without certs, and those from smaller companies, you have just gone and
> dropped your pool of quality engineers by 90%. There's your problem.
>
> Go and find good engineers by speaking with them about interesting
> engineering challenges rather than first looking for CCIE numbers. And be
> open to global candidates.
>
>>
>> Or... what advice would you give to engineers who might be missing in some
>> experience, to help them fill the gaps?
>
>
> Be curious. Turn on interesting protocols in a lab and fire up
> wireshark/tcpdump on them. Break them in interesting ways (and see what
> tcpdump shows). Write some software to do tedious tasks for you.
>
> Dont just memorise the cert cram material. This becomes really obvious to a
> seasoned interviewer.
>
> Apply for positions at your dream company, even if you think you might not
> cut it. Many/most of my colleagues never thought they'd get the job, but
> did.
>
> Unfortunately it seems you may need certs to get past some resume
> screeners...but you probably wont be happy working for those companies.
>
> BB
>
>