this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray at no blinky blinky and uh flanked tonight by tim bertino at timpertino on the twitters tim how are you aj i i'm still kind of riding a high i i know we we have uh time delays with with uh when we drop our recordings but i gotta talk about the asheville extravaganza you know we uh i learned some things uh when i was there uh number one the rest of uh our uh podcast hosts they are real they are realistic yeah yeah we're not being catfished on the internet no no don't gotta worry about that anymore so i learned that um i also learned that if for whatever strike of luck in the future that we get to do this full-time and are in person for recordings probably not going to be able to sit next to andy most of the time um man you guys like i don't want to say i don't want to say what i'm going to say anyway you guys were cute together i gotta tell you like i i was sitting next to you i was looking over you guys are like taking notes and you you were like i heart you to andy on the notepad and i was just like oh this is adorable next time next time we'll sit him next to dan and and we'll see what we're yeah there would have been blood splatter so so uh also lots of uh excellent beer in asheville north carolina yes due to my uh travel issues i i didn't get a partake in any of the barbecue that you all got to so i'm going to take your word for it that it's excellent oh my god yeah you didn't get after any barbecue on sunday before you left no i didn't but i do want to talk about sunday because i also learned that chris denney is one hell of an event planner and tour guide so i didn't i didn't fly out uh until sunday evening so uh he kept me company in the afternoon drove me around showed me uh downtown asheville and ended up taking me to the airport so um that that event would not have happened without chris and his wife so 100 that was that was excellent how uh what are your thoughts how are you doing after last week oh dude uh talk about like a huge high and then a major crash right like it was so cool to to finally meet andy in person lexi in person i know you and i have met and spent some time together and dan and i felt spoiled because i was seeing you guys again within like six months you know uh but it was just what a change in the dynamic recording like in person around the same table versus you know how we do it normally i've been telling everybody just like i don't know how we're gonna do the show from now on like i don't know if we can go back to back to remote i want to work in person jordan just recapped the entire weekend by saying a surprisingly large amount of hugging for engineers oh yeah yeah yeah i i mean i think we've known you know the people that showed up to to watch us record and stuff i think we've known them all for the last two years yeah it didn't really that was a crazy thing like it was really cool to see people but it felt more like catching up than meeting people for the first time yeah it was i don't think i'd ever experienced anything like that before yep 100 i i was really sad when i turned in our rental for the week man was that a ride or what oh my god that was so much fun so what i i requested an suv because you know we're going to be driving around five people plus we had some gear to bring around with us to to the studios and recording and everything everybody's luggage and whatnot back and forth the airport so i thought i would get a nice suv and i get there and they're just like how about a 2022 yukon it's like yes please i don't know why we didn't shoot a music video i mean we probably could have we probably could had like dan follow us down the mountain and uh in the drone yeah dr driving up and down the the hills and mountains outside of asheville in a brand new yukon that was yeah andy was just a big baby like aj your driving is making me sick you know what old man hang on your stomach oh i can't wait for him to hear this i had the insurance on it i had to drive it like i stole it yeah but we don't have insurance on andy that's true that is true no it was definitely a good time i'm looking forward to releasing that content i know that uh dan's working hard on editing that stuff up and we will see it in the weeks to come but of course by the time you hear this podcast episode it'll be after we've released all that good stuff so gotta love the the time magic we got to play with here as we record awesome well let's get rolling i am very excited to welcome our guest tonight uh he is somebody that i have stalked i mean followed on linkedin for quite some time i get super energized whenever i see him post he's always posting some really great stuff and it's my honor and privilege to welcome to the show adam hill thank you so much for joining us hey thank you for having me um likewise i've been uh following you for actually cuffs a couple of years and i remember when you first made the announcement on linkedin hey i'm gonna start this podcast i was like oh okay aj doing big things now i'm gonna have to uh check this out and uh just watching how this uh platform has grown over the little bit of time that i've been following it i just been pretty impressed so i'm glad that you thought it was fit to bring me on here and there's no way i'm saying no to this awesome man i really appreciate that yeah i mean you know watching what you posted and then you know from the short time that i've been following you seeing the progressions that you made in your career it was like a no-brainer like we gotta have this guy on we gotta we gotta spill the secret sauce and understand you know how does he do it looking at the linkedin i'm wondering what the heck took us so long look i gotta treat it like chick-fil-a i don't know if i could give the secret sauce now i don't know close to the chest what do you do today so yeah i'm actually a uh senior network engineer slash network consultant for a company called flex central is a co-locations company that does hybrid i.t solutions um they're also like a tier 2 isp we have a national market so we're stretched from east coast to west coast with some sites in canada and even a site in amsterdam so a little bit of international presence but our main focus is here in the states so i do i consult customers on network engagements um help customers take their network infrastructure and connect it to the cloud whether it's aws azure or google all your different cloud providers and i'm typically helping them architect different solutions high availability um help them understand best practices when it comes to network security and network infrastructure type stuff so i'm on the i'm i'm like a hybrid between the consulting side and i'm also on the engineering side where there are certain infrastructures where i would do your typical engineering work like upgrades and migrations and things like that oh you're talking kind of kind of i think the the sweet spot for for network engineers and that you get kind of that mix of you know the the business decisions that companies are trying you're understanding their pain points and their challenges and where they're trying to go so you're helping them find those high level solutions but in some cases you're still getting you know getting your hands dirty and working through it as well i think that's that's a really cool spot to find i kind of want to ask you you know the data center colo service provider space i mean that's in contrast to enterprise i.t that's a really different animal had you had experience here before or what what has this experience been like uh it's like a network engineer's playground so like you have all these people that they do their lab environments and they stand up all these little um even g and um gns3 and packet tracer type environments saying man it'd be cool to be able to do this for a company one day well essentially that's exactly what i'm doing for companies now like it's essentially it's like a one big lab environment the only difference is it's production um and i've worked the enterprise i.t too enterprise iit is good but enterprise iit is more customer um and user focus and a lot more systems focus where um i'm doing more work managing the servers and less work managing the networking because a lot of those changes you have to do after hours and all that but the service provider space networking is like the main thing so it's like all the different type of things you see in lab environments i'm doing like probably 60 of it on the job so it's it's a completely different animal i love it i'll probably never go back to enterprise now that i've been sucked into the dark side the vortex yeah i think that that's a big distinction right because when you work in enterprise tech at least in my experience you did maybe like one or two like super cool projects in a year but then on on a consultancy side like you're involved in the cool stuff like all the time all the time yeah matter of fact i just got finished um help with the customer they needed a high availability solution from atlanta to portland and we used denver as the primary part and we used um portland our portland as the uh secondary um path to get to aws and designed aws to exchange the routes back to the customer data center from atlanta and just setting all that up and testing um doing failover testing and all that type of stuff it was just it was nice you got to run with that start to finish oh yeah i ran i uh i led the whole project architected the whole project i uh helped the customer understand their need for high availability because they thought they had it and i was like no you don't so you got some information from a customer they thought they were already doing something you do some digging in find out that that they don't have that how do you explain that to them to where you're you're getting your point across but you don't offend them um that's a delicate walk that is a delicate walk but i i feel like what i do is uh with customers i kind of exp i kind of like be myself right off the bat so you know how like sometimes a person can be loose energetic and all that when they're around their co-workers or their peers but when they get around the customer they kind of like they got to exercise some level of professionalism is like okay let me put the real me to the side a little bit i limit doing that i'm the real me in front of a customer and i'm the real me um when i'm with my co-workers and peers and all that so being said with that being said um i told the customer um kind of like black and white straight up i said hey you know me i'm not gonna lie to you well here's i said you know me i'm not gonna lie to you i gotta ask the questions do you want high availability they'll say yes i thought we was having it because they thought just because they had one port and two different aws instances that they had high availability i was like no that's not high availability i was like no no no high availability is when you have two different paths to your aws environment and um i just told them i just told them straight up but the other thing i told them straight up but the thing is i have a good rapport with them so like i'm able to have that direct conversation with them and you know i kind of like throw a joke in there here and there just to kind of break the monotony a little bit and um i said hey to get high availability um you're going through i'm not going to mention the customer's name but you're going through denver right now when the well actually you're going through portland right now i said yeah latency is higher than what it needs to be so let's make portland the secondary connection let's make denver the primary connection because what people don't know about aws is that aws has regions um and with their regions they have availability zones and these zones um cover a large span of territory so you don't necessarily have if you're trying to go to a certain aws region like aws west you don't necessarily have to go all the way to oregon to get the aws you can get the aws to the closest um exit point um that's in that same region and then let aws handle the back end router because i guarantee you i don't care how good your company is your network's probably not as good as aws network so having that information i kind of like explained that to the customer in so many words so i told him like let's make denver your primary point to aws and let's make portland your backup port and um your backup path to aws and um a lot of these guys they're more systems oriented devops oriented they don't really know much about networking so i didn't really get much kickback about it plus i had a good rapport with them so they um they kind of just accepted it they was like yeah let's go ahead and do it and then i had them get with my sales team they talked about cost and all that and it wasn't they realized that cost wasn't too much more and they realized how available high availability was necessary so they uh signed the contract and re-redesigned their network um and set up denver as the primary part set up uh portland as the second the primary path instead of portland as a secondary path set up bgp between um their on-site router aws set up pre-pending set up um bfd for fast failover and all that type of stuff and uh everything worked out and then once they went to the denver side they saw like 30 millisecond legacy improvement just by switching from yeah so putting that on the resume help the customer save 30 milliseconds that's a lifetime yeah yes so yeah yeah once they once we changed their primary to uh in this case denver and uh dropped the millis latency to 30 milliseconds which is huge because they was trying to do like database sequel type stuff across this link yeah you're going to need every little bit of millisecond that you could think of so that was probably a recent project that i did and i get to do projects like that often um that's a large part of my job is to help customers understand what they're trying to do in the cloud understand what they're trying to do in the data center and then design a solution that allows their network to facilitate um their business needs so it's it's fun i love it nice nice i really i really like the advice that you gave about how you carry yourself because i i think especially in these type of engagements if if a customer thinks that you're not being yourself or that you might be hiding something i mean they could pick up on that you may lose a little bit of trust but if somebody can really pick up on this person is being who they really are and it's just everything's just natural i think you know like you said building trust building rapport is really important for uh for customer relationships um i did want to ask you said that you you had built rapport with this customer is that is that pretty typical that you have um ongoing relationships with your customers or do you have many that you know just come to you for a certain engagement and then they're out or is it how does that look uh both okay and the ones for that the ones that are there for a small engagement and then they head out what happens is when i do build a good rapport with them eventually they need more gauges down the line they're like hey can we get that atom guy uh to help us out with this um i've had customers come back isn't that the coolest feeling oh yeah oh yeah it's nice now there are some customers that um there's really no getting around it and you got to kind of like know your uh you got to know your audience too because not every customer is going to be all for you kind of like being yourself and you're flying up some customers are strictly i've had some customers that was straight to the business i don't want no joking around let's just get straight to the point and you got to have to feel you got to you got to fill that out in the beginning like um and then if you see that a customer is like that then you just got to just stay focused on business and there's a couple customers like that but it's few and far between most of the customers appreciate the fact that i stay my um self where i mix business with humor and all that type of stuff you're human they appreciate that you're human pretty much yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah i love that so like you know where i work i work for a partner and we don't get like assigned to customers it's whoever has the skill set at the time that the project comes up whoever's available right but you know even in the short time that i've been here i've already had customers like ask ask me back by name like hey is aj available to do this yes you know i want his help yeah and that's just like really fun you know like when i hit that point with a customer i know that like one i'm doing a good job and two like i'm establishing that rapport that level of trust uh and then i can sell them some stuff no that's not what's not why i do it i mean but the thing is though i mean think about it nobody goes into the job saying all right i want a job so i can make friends no what are people right get employed for they need to earn a living they want to earn a living you got to make money when you have that trust like when it comes time to have those tough conversations those tough conversations are a lot easier to have oh yeah or or if it's like hey they're like you got a big gap over here and we got to spend some money to fill it like it's a lot easier to have those kind of conversations when you've already had that that rapport that that trust established oh yeah yeah and i've had those conversations too look man i know we're friends but you got to spend a million dollars like we gotta fix this oh man so i i want to ask you you probably see so many different types of technologies like is there a particular one that's coming up a lot these days like what's one of your favorites to work with uh i mean i'm your traditional cisco router switch lover um but i will say this though back when i was early earlier in my it career i used to trash for the gate i was not a fan of fortigate at all and i still hate their switches but i've recently gotten to get more experience with their firewalls and i'm actually going to say that fortigate they've uh impressed me with their firewall line like i would say florida games probably got one of the top firewall products um in the market and i um i always enjoy working on fortigate firewalls because it's intuitive it's robust they have great documentation their support's good and good balance between the gui and the um the client command line and um they also uh have a lot of rich features that just makes our jobs easier as you know network security engineers so i will say i have come around to fortigate to 40. i've been hearing that a lot from from people lately um about the the features and they you know it's the 40 everything right they got really just bringing it in for a whole you know campus branch whatever anything so yeah i've been i've been hearing the same things from other people as well yeah i've heard they've got a pretty compelling sd-wan offering i have i've not really done a whole lot with fortigate i worked for a small partner for a few months that that led with fortigate and so i i just started digging to it but i didn't hang around long enough to really get my feet wet with us so i haven't done that as they went either oh really no i have not um we uh it's something that we talked about possibly offering but it hasn't um hasn't really materialized it to anything just yet now i won't say that that won't happen in the future sure but um right now we typically just use it for more traditional firewall whereas like the routing and the security stuff um but yeah i heard the sd-wan product is pretty solid i've heard the same stuff yeah but when i hear a peer review on a company i've never heard what uh or heard of or worked with to hear you say they have great support and their documentation is really good sold absolutely sold like those are those are two huge things for me you know like if i've never worked with them yeah and to know that they have solid documentation that i can go back and reference i'll take it all day long because the documentation i'm dealing with now yeah not all not all companies are created equal when it comes to documentation oh man isn't that the truth holy crap but uh ford against documentation i will say uh afforded that you're doing a good job nice keep keep all the good work did you hear that for jeff we got a guy in our community that works for fortinet as an sc and he he goes by four to jeff ford okay jeff so uh hopefully he's listening to jeff your fourth gates are great your switches still suck love it i love your firewalls though awesome man so i i want to go back through your career you know what how did you get started in it and um you know how did you kind of figure out that this is where you wanted to be yeah yeah so um 2007 i'm um fresh in the military trying to figure out what i'm gonna do with my life and uh join the military to um travel and to find out what kind of skill sets i want to have for when i do get out like i knew that i wasn't going to stay in um i knew it was going to be a temporary thing and it ended up being exactly that but while i was in the military i actually did it work but i didn't realize i was doing it work so um i was uh we did like a lot of network communication stuff while we're on the ships out the sea well i was on the submarine so we went under the water um we would have our antennas and our antennas up and we do our submarine communications up out build the networks and encrypt all the data and all the short facilities would um send all the message traffic to the ship about like what the ship needed to do next and all that type of stuff so i was in charge of building it and maintain the networks that facilitated that and also you know security and all that type of stuff the security military you think security you think cyber security is serious now you should see security to the military it is absolutely insane like wow well at the time i'm new in the field so i didn't really think nothing of it but when i look back on it and think about it now versus rit security cyber security now versus cyber security in the military the military don't play but um going back to the topic i eventually fast forward to five years later i get out of the military and at that time i'm really a button pusher i didn't really understand what i was doing i didn't understand like tcp ip i didn't understand encryption types i didn't understand site-to-site tunnels or anything like that all i was doing was just pushing buttons and when i got out of the military i still kind of didn't really know what i wanted to do um and what happened was there was this company called new horizons computer learning center they hit me up and they said hey we're going to uh we got this program that you can go into and not only will we give you uh computer skill sets but well i should help you find a job i was like sold because i'm out of a job i'm like i need to get something so i go to this boot camp in gainesville florida and they start doing the a plus network plus security plus um training you know how your typical boot camps have and as they was doing this training this particular um office and new horizons they actually had veterans there and those veterans were good at like translated millet i.t in the military because terms are a little bit different on that side to um i.t terms as we know it today and i was like oh so that's what that was that in the navy oh that's what i did in the navy oh okay that everything was starting to click nice and when everything was clicking it kind of like at the same time sparked my love for it and they started talking about all the money you could potentially make in 19 and all that too and between that and between finally being able to coordinate or correlate what i did in the military to what the certifications were teaching i just started falling in love like instantly like i went from here to here well let me look at the screen from here to here there you go you can see it from here to here like that quick nice um and i just went all in um i started off at a company uh called can i mean you know everyone knows ken i work for canon i work for canon as a tech support um i was on the front lines doing um tech support helping customers with printers and all that type of stuff but you know how even though you're designed for you're really hired to do canon printers there was actually opportunities to help with like home networks and help with business networks and all that it's like okay yeah you need to set your network up to do this so that your printer or your multi-function scanner or whatever peripheral you're using right can connect to the network so i got a lot of experience there um pay wasn't all that great though um yeah i know right yeah pay was not that great um i was only making 13 an hour but i was just so happy to get into the i.t field that yeah at first i didn't care i was like okay i'm getting experience and i'm actually doing something outside the navy i'm not just unemployed because prior to that i was um unemployed for a year so i get the cannon and at first i was um happy just helping customers with printers and all that but eventually i get a little bored with that and i'm like all right it's time to move up and i uh move up to they had a tier three position open and i got the job just because i was excelling at the position i was there right now so this was within canon a move up not a move out okay yeah it was a promotion with that can and i started tier one and then i moved up to tier three so they have three tiers tier one tier two tier three and then they have internal i.t which so you just skipped here too you're just like i'm going straight through three straight three straight to tier three i was not playing no game really it was just cause they had to open it they had to open it i applied and i got the job just because i impressed them um and canon they do have a good like reward system and all that like they kind of look at your track record they have like internal um recognition that goes in your file and all that and all that plays into account on who they hire and all that but the thing is okay at canon everybody wanted to um everyone wanted to be on the internal i.t team so we had the external i.t where we're helping customers with multi-function devices and all that and helping customers with windows servers and home networks and all that but everybody and their mama and their grandma and their uncle and their auntie they all wanted to be on the internal i.t and people knew it they knew it they knew that there was there was hungry sharks at the sea trying to take their jobs so at me i was actually even though i was one of those ones i wasn't one of the ones trying to take their job at that time i would try to ask the itp but hey how do you make it to your level like the systems engineers and network engineers and all that i said how do you um make it to the level that you're in right now those it professionals like those engineers they were stuck in the mindset of oh this guy's trying to take my job so they won't really help they wouldn't really give any uh advice or anything like that and it used to frustrate me i'm like man i hope at the time you know i'm still new in i.t field so i'm thinking that's just how all engineers are obviously i know that's not the case now but um that kind of made me feel some type of way i'm like man i'm not even trying to take your job if anything i'm just trying to get the skills and then if nothing comes up here i'll go somewhere else shoot whatever so i meet a buddy of mine at cannon his name is um john raw and he was in the same boat as me he was uh i'm just trying to make it in the game and him and i connected and uh we were both tired of the lack of pay that we was having we was both trying to get up in the i.t field and him and i just challenged each other we was like yeah let's go ahead and get a plus network plus security plus because that um school that i went to the i.t school even though i took the classes and took all the courses and all that i did not get a chance to um take the test because i had some issues with the gi bill paying for the school so they had to let me go now because i had a good rapport with the people there they still helped me find my job at canon and i told them that hey give me a little bit of time i'll fix the stuff with the military and we'll um and i'll make sure that the gi bill pays you so i can go back and finish the school well that took a couple years because um i was still battling my gi bill um situation with the military and um when i got out of the military early they actually garnished my paycheck and all that too so i was i had to owe them back and they was um taking a portion of my money so i'm struggling financially i'm trying to raise a wife of kids on making less than a hundred thousand dollars every two weeks and then 30 percent of that getting taken away so it was rough so i was motivated i was like look i know at the time at that time when man john was going through similar like he wasn't in the military but he was going through similar where like they were struggling financially so him and i clicked based off of that and we started challenging each other like hey what's going ahead let's get certified and let's move into the i.t field i love that i like the buddy system there you know you kept each other accountable you kept each other motivated like that's that's a lot like you know a study group or something right like just because it chances are and i i'm certainly guilty of this like if you're doing it alone you're probably not going to hold yourself that accountable as as you are like you know having a buddy to to hold you to it yeah and he definitely held me to it i held him to it but even if he wasn't there at that time i was so hungry that i would have i would have i had all the motivation i mean so let me tell you this story real quick before we circle back to that so at one point while i was working at cannon i'll never forget this day my wife calls me ballin out crying i'm like i'm like what's going on what's going on i'm in the middle of work i think i was on a break or something like that i'm like what's going on she starts bawling crying i was like all right i need you to calm down tell me what's going on i can't understand you and she was like they cut the water off they cut the water off i was like what water were you talking about there's like i can't give malachi about malachi is my son at the time he was one years old and we um ended up owing like over 400 on the water bill because we just couldn't pay it and they finally cut it off and um she couldn't give him a bath so i called my dad and said hey dad i need to borrow 400 so i can do that now fortunately my dad he's big on taking care of your family provider so he gave me the money no questions asked and i was able to get the water cut back on but at that moment that moment that moment was life-changing for me um and i tell that story all the time because at that moment that's when circling back to what i saw earlier and when you was talking about how like the buddy system it kind of keeps you accountable at that moment i did not even need a buddy system personally that's for me personally because the budding system alone was just thinking about the fact that my wife called me balling out because we couldn't pay bills and we was getting stuff cut off in the house and yeah i'm worried about getting evicted and all that type of stuff and it's like that kind of grew me up right there and so that my i took my love for it and my concern about my financial situation and that's when i uh that was all the most invasion i made so um me and john were um still keeping each other accountable studying he was giving me like study materials and all that because i couldn't afford it at the time and i would go crazy into studying i would go crazy with the experience and all that with the experience like working at canada and all that and eventually the gi bill came through finally so they finally uh said okay the gi bill paid for the classes that i didn't uh that i couldn't finish so they invited me to come back down and finish that program so i had two weeks of pto i used all two weeks and went down there funded my own way down there and said hey i'm gonna finish these courses and get these certs and i said all right i know i got two weeks or two weeks so in those two weeks i think prior to the two weeks i got a plus already so i already got a plus at the time because i tried to work internal i.t during that time at canon and they was like yeah because you don't have a plus we can um we can't take you so i already got my a plus but then i went back to that school and i finished network plus a security plus and i got both of those searched within those two weeks wow actually no i take that back nope i take that back i take that back no that's not true i had able i had a plus a network plus doing the buddy system with john okay so i got that on my own and then i went down there to finish security plus and i i went for two weeks security plus in two weeks that sounds pretty intense oh you're not gonna find me doing that no i was up till like 1am i was i was i was going from 8 a.m to 1 a.m every day studying oh my gosh yeah and there was times where and i like i said i used all my pto at canon i had two weeks of pto i used every last benefit to go down to that school um and i studied my butt off i passed security plus by the skin of my teeth because you know two weeks is really not enough time to prepare for it but i was uh i was a man on a mission so um i took the class i'm in the hotel studying um i'm um studying until like 1 a.m until i'm just like way too tired go to sleep wake up at 8 am start it all over again and then i get the security plus and then um i go back up now i got my a plus my network plus my security plus and i've been with canada at a year and a half like this i absolutely gotta be able to get an internal help desk job yeah um because like i said canon even though canon has helped us it's more like tier one technical support it's not the same as internal i.t so i was like i need to get internal i.t so i put my resume out there um and i eventually get hired by the bank um oh okay yeah a bank called town bank they uh they are based out of virginia um because i'm still living in virginia at the time and um i'm their internal i.t and that was the next learning curve so i uh at that place i started learning how to like manage really managed window systems um you know like building profiles for customers image excuse me uh imagine pcs like i never i didn't know anything about like images servers and sccm and all that type of stuff that was the place where i got to learn like some secm type stuff i started learning like more about server hardware like even basic things like how to change your hard drive out of the server um racket and stacking cisco switches helping the network engineers um with like different projects and all that so my main job obviously is internal help desk so i'm doing you know your typical and user support helping users with pc issues um network issues um now i'm working at the enterprise so at the bank i that's that was the first place i learned about like you know port shut down and all that type of stuff if you have poor security on it and i remember the first time that happened i was like i have no idea what's going on i don't understand why your network i was like the port looks fine to me i mean i i i don't know and then that's when um they show me yeah there's this thing called port security where it's just the port down the network engineers school me on that and i was like oh okay and um learned about wireless networking like i learned all kinds of crap at the bank like i credit the bank at least that time at the bank for like helping me learn enterprise i.t um and at the time i was trying to i was making probably about 40 000 a year so it was better than the um cannon but it's still i'm still striking by paycheck to paycheck and i'm still struggling because you know you can't support a family on 40 000 a year no no way yeah no no on the size of the bank how many how many branches are we talking 60 sites we had a wow yeah so they had uh their main office their main headquarters was in southern virginia um the main headquarters for the mortgage department which is where i worked at was at virginia beach like right on the beach yep it was literally literally right on the beach um and that's why i worked out of um and then they had all the branch offices all over north carolina all over um virginia and they have some satellite offices in like pennsylvania and all that like i don't know where they're at now but that's what they were at the time um so we had about 60 sites and i'm helping users obviously in-house and i'm helping users over the phone so it was a combination of remote support and in-house support and then because you know i'm still trying to grind i'm realizing okay if i want to make at that time i'm thinking i want to make sixty thousand dollars if i can get the sixty thousand dollars because that's how much i made in the military before i left out if i could get back to 60 000 i'm good that's what i was thinking at the time so i'm like all right i started looking up systems engineers active directory engineers their average salary 60 70 80 000 i'm like i was like oh yeah i got to grind all right i was like 80 000. i'll just go out just like my heart was just thumping like the idea of making eighty thousand seventy thousand dollars i was like okay sixty thousand dollars i'm like okay it's time to get my mcse so so i i just wanna try to figure out where we are in space and time here so how far after the military was this like how long have you been out of the military um at that time this was around 2015. i was out of the military three years at this point so and you're probably still early mid maybe late 20s uh mid mid mid to late 20s i was uh mid 20s still yep okay all right all right and you got you got a family wife and child yep two children but yep so uh so that's three years into the i.t career so i'm three years in and i've got help that's experienced i'm trying to make it into the system engineering world so i'm shadowing that we're engineers i'm shadowing systems engineers um i didn't really want to be a networking at the time yet i want to be in systems uh so you were doing the shadowing at the bank yeah so so what was that like was that like a an officially supported shadowing like did you talk to your manager like hey this is where i want to get to and they're like okay let's have you shadow you know these engineers and you can learn about their job or did you like talk to those people and be like hey i want to learn more and they just kind of like took you under their wing what did that look like uh the latter so my manager even though he wasn't against it there wasn't really any kind of program to facilitate moving me up and all that he knew what had to happen but there wasn't really any systems in place to facilitate mentorship anything like that so i just changed it on my own i was going to say i think by this point in the show we know adam wasn't going to wait around for it definitely not i wanted to make sure we highlight that because i also knew that that was the case yeah there we go no i wasn't waiting i wasn't waiting you just went to those like systems engineers and be like hey like i want what you got like can you show me are you willing to show me yep that's exactly what happened and unlike the canada engineers that were kind of standoffish these guys were more than happy to take me under the ring and bring me in the room and show me at least some of the stuff that they did so it was a lot better now it wasn't like perfect but it was a lot better they than canon so at the time i'm just happy about it um and like i said i helped them out with some projects and all that i helped them like rack a stack cisco switches i helped the systems engineers like change out hard drives and the um the uh that we had hp pro line servers and all that and um whatever we had network outages or systems outages i would help the um engineers troubleshoot um i mean obviously that is something new because you know i get wanting to jump in and and help out with new things or troubleshooting things here and there but i don't think i've ever heard a story of when there was an outage somebody who isn't responsible for it is willing to jump in into the fire and and help out i mean if that doesn't speak volumes for that company to uh give you a shot i don't know what would yeah i'm just looking at a child he said i would mentor adam because he was like he could best practice 500 i wanted to make sure he saw that i saw that i'm looking at it right now you got to say no man that's 550. and low 550. well that's why they let him troubleshoot you're like oh yeah man you can you can have the keys i intimidated them they didn't want me to beat him up we don't let him help us he might he might kidnap us so let me just one way to grow your career we haven't heard of on the show yeah total fear right but um no so i jumped in to help them troubleshoot now it wasn't necessarily me telling them what to do it was more like me them making changes and then me verifying the changes and all that it was still a valuable experience oh sure yeah because i'm learning how to verify changes made and then they're schooling me while the changes are being made um and for the second time i'm not gonna go too deep into that um so fast forward i get my mcse um and i also met another guy named dan boykin uh shout out dan boyk and him and i still talk to this day um he was another guy that like once john raw he ended up staying at cannon and we still talked but it wasn't like the same i go to town bank and then the next person that i um buddy system you could say buddy buddy system of like getting certified and moving up the ranks was uh dan boyk and he was the systems administrator at the time now he's like a security engineer manager he moved up just like i moved up but um him and i clicked and uh it's funny because i only met him one time i met him one time when i went up to richmond to do a install or like a um uh um set up a new office set up the pcs and all that and phones at the new office i met him there he was setting up the servers and i was setting up the pcs and phones and all that and we met there and we just became good friends ever since then nice and we're still friends to this day we still talk to this day at least once a month we're always checking up on each other um but um like i said he inspired me because he was able to get his mcsc and he was able to move on to bigger and better things and all that and i eventually get by mcse and then i realized in atlanta well not atlanta and virginia i realized that um in the area that i was in which is like hampton roads norfolk virginia beach and all that a lot of those jobs are government oriented and i was trying to get away from government because like i said i really didn't have a good relationship with the government at a time um so i was like all right and this is something for your viewers to understand don't be afraid to relocate if you have to in order to uh get your dreams to come true in the i.t world if you want to make it in this i.t world don't be afraid to relocate so i knew that if i'm going to make the kind of money that i want to make and do the type of stuff i want to do i got to get up out of virginia so we we sift through different places that we decided that me and my wife talked about and eventually we relocated to atlanta because you know atlanta a big city um good airports not too far from my family and all that so i was like all right we're gonna settle in atlanta uh we relocated to atlanta i found a job well i was actually job hunting in atlanta with my mcse and the thing about um job hunting with um the thing about job hunting outside of the area that you live in what makes that challenging is that a lot of recruiters won't really give you the time of day because they'd be like well we really need you to be in atlanta or we really need you to be in the city that we're recruiting for before we can really take you serious so i had to fight through that and it was tough and i almost got to the point where i was about to just say you know what i'm just gonna move down there anyway and i'll just take my chances but fortunately a job did come um somebody did give me an offer which as a systems administrator they they kind of gave me a lowball office it was like 47 000 but i was kind of disappointed in that but i was like you know what forget it i'm just going to take it i need something i need to get down to atlanta get kind of get your foot in the door you know in atlanta you know and go from there right yeah and that's why i did i did want to ask i've never really delved into the the sysadmin side the microsoft side did you it sounds like at least getting into atlanta it was a little bit difficult but had you when you were looking were there a lot of positions open for that kind of vertical oh yeah okay tons of tons of positions open and 95 percent of them tear me away because i lived in virginia uh i was like look and i even told him like look i am willing to pay i don't need you to relocate me you don't have to pay to relocate me i'll relocate myself and figure it out i just need opportunity um and they just didn't uh they just said sorry but uh they just said sorry but we decided to go in a different direction i've actually traveled down to atlanta and i interviewed for two different companies while i was down while still living in virginia i actually took a rental car i obviously took some pto and i took a rental car and i interviewed for two different companies i was like i'm gonna try to interview for as many companies as i can i went down there for a week interviewed for two different companies drove back up both of those companies turned me down so that was a little bit frustrating i was a little bit frustrated because i had to get a rental car spend money and all that and it just did not work out but i mean like i said whenever you are chasing something anything that's worth having it's worth waiting for and sometimes you got to get out your comfort zone so i was wanting to take that risk and um it didn't work out but like i said the other job came right at the nick of time because it was right at the end of summer so i was able to move my wife down there and uh get kids settled in school and all that type of stuff i worked this job and then my first job in atlanta um and you just let me know that i'm going too long i'm just trying to like no man you got all the time in the world we're good okay cool cool so then i moved to atlanta um i worked this job and right off the bat me and the manager started off cool maybe for the first week but then after that we did not get along at all um i'm over here trying to push the bar forward she was like no we need to move at a slower pace and we need to do this and it just ended up being a clash of ideas and i will say there was a growing thing for me um because um it was a growing experience for me because you know when it comes to managing systems one you gotta know your role at two you gotta understand the needs of the business so i did not understand that at the time at the time at my first system admin job i'm thinking just all technology like i'm not thinking nothing about the business so um part of that was on me for being too pushy pushy about trying to implement all these new things without understanding the business objectives and i think she was trying to tell me that but i wasn't listening um but at the same time with her because i actually uh had a man i actually had a manager who was under me uh or not that i was under at the same time i guess once we started like having friction in our work relationship um she would kind of like throw me to the wolves and all that and like there'll be times where systems weren't set up right that she gave me bad instructions on developers will start yelling and i'm looking at the manager like you're gonna tell them that you the one that told me to do this and she'll just sit there and brown nose herself up like i'm gonna do with that that's all you oh that pissed me off wow oh i was so hot wow that is dirty i was like oh so hot and all that and i was like you know what i'm not going to last here long i was like you know what i'm just going to stay here just long enough to kind of get my feet wet and i'm probably got to find another job well that job only lasted a month it lasted a month and they fired me we had an outage at one point and i had to help them with the outage i helped them fix the outage and all that and they uh and after that outage i guess um they tried to hold me accountable for it even though you know when it comes to leadership unless you just do something blatantly terrible and all that you typically say hey the team failed let's do like lessons learned and all that type of stuff with that dude we didn't do no lessons learned a way to do no training where to do none of that it was the outage happened her and i worked together to fix it and then after that they fired me the next day so uh that was a terrible experience and i was oh yeah i was pissed off so not only did you take the chance you uprooted your life to take this job and and to have it not go well in a hurry that i mean how did you handle that uh i kept the end goal in mind um the end goal is i knew that the it feel was stable and i knew that uh my why was big enough like my why was hey i will do anything to get the break into this field and get my um family to stability so my y was big enough and going through those experiences it also helped shape me to understand that whenever i get into a position of leadership into the community i'm not gonna do the people behind me as somebody's leadership has done to me yeah um so all that thinking about all that is what kind of kept me to stay grounded during that difficult time um so i'm getting my resume out there and at the time i worked at a computer repair shop so i go from a system admin job to a computer repair shop making 15 an hour again so i was like man i'll take a step backwards i'm like you gotta be kidding me so i do what you gotta do to keep the keep the food on the table though so yeah and respect for that because there's a lot of people that would like sit there like nope i'm not going back i'm not going back i need that next sc job uh the next system's engineering job but you did what you had to do man i did what i had to do and i told them i told the computer repair job that hey i'm a systems engineer and ultimately that's what i'm trying to do and this is temporary and they kind of understood it they was like yeah you're cool man just uh come work for us for a little while and we'll uh we'll um just just help us out while we're trying to get our staffing going and then once you get something going then um we'll facilitate transfers and all that type of stuff so that was real cool and the boss was uh there was real good so we had to understand that at the beginning so i ended up working there for like two three months while still looking for systematic jobs and then finally finally november of 2016 everything changed everything everything changed for the better so a recruiter hit me up for a system admin job making 27 an hour and i'm like oh this good money right here oh that's good money but it was a contractor job it was a contract it wasn't even contract to hire it was just contract but okay all right but i didn't care i heard 27 an hour and i heard i'm getting back at the system admin world so yeah i hopped on it they ended up hiring me um i interviewed with the uh guy and um i interviewed with a guy named johnny harris him and i still talk from time to time on linkedin we're still pretty good and um i get the offer and i tell the computer repair boss i'm like hey look this job is hiring me so i want to move the part time he was kind of upset about it so like the thing that we talked about before where there was understanding now when it came time to actually execute he was like a little upset about it but he accepted that he was like because he was like uh i guess i'll accept it but he got kind of mad at first but i ain't gonna lie this time i didn't care i was i'm about to get back into the system admin world again i just got fired and i'm working this computer repair job which was good though i actually learned a lot about computers doing the computer repair job like learning the motherboards and learning transistors and you know i actually learned a little bit more about windows the windows operator system during that time so it was good experience and then you always got the customer service stuff always in customer service experience so i get to the system engine i get to the system admin world and now this is where my first opportunity to work at a large data center so i'm working at a large data center probably about 500 servers on-premise data center in smyrna georgia um and we um i get it's a four-month contract and essentially i was contracted because their main guy he ended up having to take extended leave um so they brought me in to finish this project which was pretty much an ad hardening project um where well a server harder than project where ultimately we um i had to go to all the different servers according with all the developers and management and database admins and i had to change their permissions to where instead of them having local admin rights to every server we basically uh set them up to where they're part of a security group ad group and we made sure that any group can make them access servers and then i did some exchange work for them i remember i had to stood up it i hadn't stood up uh x transport server because the x transport server went down the first day i came on site the first day i came on site there as transport server went down and they only had one so it was a single point of failure and obviously exchange was completely down for them us yeah so it was a it was it was a bad night i got i gotta know just about everybody i've ever talked to that's that's been an email admin or an exchange admin even for a short period of time they have never been able to walk away from that so are you still doing some sort of exchange i know you've had multiple jobs but it seems like any time somebody hears that you had even a day's worth of exchange experience 10 years ago you're the guy today no but i was doing it i was doing this change work all the way up until recent wow okay there it is but today but with my current job no i am not doing any exchange work but i was doing exchange work for a long time like you said so uh we uh so the edge transport server goes down and i'm standing up a new windows 2008 box i'm building out the components of x transport getting everything set up and all that type of stuff we uh the the senior engineer at the time he's uh talking to microsoft trying to get it fixed they couldn't get it fixed and they would stand up this new server and then because i came in to kind of help with that they kind of i build a rapport with that with them right away that's like oh yeah we they kind of we have respect for this guy he's able to come in hit the ground running all that type of stuff so that we get back to the um project the security hardened project uh 500 servers about three 200 users i get all that it takes me a few months to get them all squared away and all that a lot of like coordinating saying hey i'm gonna move you to this group make sure you can access your stuff if they couldn't access it then we'll troubleshoot all that type of stuff that i did some then they stood up some new servers and all that so i would be racking the stacking do some racking the stacking um doing some um uh exchange definitely did some exchange work um definitely did some um ad work and what version just curious what version of ad in exchange were you running uh 2 000 exchange 2010 and 80 2008 yeah that was their environment and this was before office 365 really took off so while i was working there everything was still on premise um so we uh finished we finished the security project and the four months is up and i'm telling them hey look i love working with you guys is there any way we can get some kind of full-time deal going and i was like yeah we want to do it but it's just not in the budget so the boss because he was so good he was so cool with me he was like hey look i can't really put you on full time but and your contract is up but what we'll do is we'll just take the security budget and we'll pay you from that security budget so that you can have time to find a full-time job wow yeah so i was able to stay on for like another month or so while i found another job uh because i was gonna try to stay there uh yeah yeah and uh told them to up their security budget right i should have they must have had more money in the exchange budget yeah i did want to dig into that because i i'm fascinated by uh people who go after these contract jobs because honestly they scare the crap out of me now i know there's a lot of value especially how much experience you gain but i i gotta think with with what you're saying in the impact that you had to have made in that short period of time that they i'm sure they would have kept you in a heartbeat if they could have oh i was going to get to that i was actually going to get to that cause all right here we go buddy funny thing you mentioned that so uh i uh i search for another job kind of reluctantly because i really wanted to stay there at the time i was like even if they didn't pay me more even if they just kept me at that rate i would have been fine because i just enjoyed working with those guys i was getting great experience um i found a job system it was a systems and network administrator job so it's kind of like a hybrid job for a enterprise company that did like benefits management i uh interview for i get the offer it's in it's in it's kind of like closer to the city but it was cool um and they paid me 60 000. so i'm just going crazy i'm like i'm back it's a 60 000. because i told them that's what i wanted i was like yep i want 60 000 from this mcsc in this experience i was like yeah we could pay you that i probably could have got more my boss my that boss told me later on that i probably could have got up to 65 000 but i just said you know i just held in on 60 000. so i get 60 000 and um i ended up leaving the contract job they even throw a party for me and all that and you know as contractors nobody really throws parties for contractors it's like you're a contractor right i'm done man no they actually threw a party they had a cake and everything everyone came it was nice i was really part of the family that just did not get benefits um and then what's funny was circling back to what you were talking about tim my first week starting the uh new sixty thousand dollar job the con uh the senior engineer quit no way they he quickly he actually quit and they asked me if i wanted to come back but at the time i'm making 60 i was like no i got to stay here now because i have a hard rule for myself that if i select if i work if i offer to work for a company i do a minimum of a year and then after a year i weigh my options and all that but at that time i was so happy to get back to 60 000. we bought a house again we was actually homeowners again so my wife was going crazy she was uh celebrating and it got to the point where i was able to go to a dentist appointment get my teeth fixed or not fixed but get my teeth like you know regular cleaning and i was able to because i had benefit benefits and all that i was able to pay that without really worrying about it and i was just like thanking god i was like thank you man like i was just praising god and everything huge turning point that's awesome it was a huge turning point like when i got back to 60 000 and then my wife got a job and then between her and i together we're making about 90 000 together and it's like we can finally not be scraping by paycheck to paycheck no more like that was just a real feeling because i'm going it was about so going back to timelines it was about um from the time i get out the military to the time i'm working at this company called hodges mace making um the 60 000. it was about a four and a half year period of struggling scraping by checking to check yeah not knowing what's gonna happen like tim said taking contract jobs not knowing when you're gonna be let go like it was just a whole lot of uncertainty during that four and a half year period but just continue to persist continue the grind continue to get certified and then i get to this job and everything is looking good now at this time i'm not just a systems engineer anymore i'm a systems and a network admin i'm actually a dual i'm actually uh uh um what you call a jack of all trades so i did systems engineering work network engineer work and i still did help that's work so i still help users with pc problems and all that mm-hmm get them printers out of here i was a pretty expert by that right canon town banking and now this i was i was the printer guru by then but that was funny because we actually stood up a print system i forget what it's called but we actually stood up a uh a secure print system where essentially it was like a cloud print server that combined all the printers together you print to the cloud and then it like goes to the nearest printer okay yeah yeah yeah so i i forget man i can't think well i can't i can't remember what the product is called it's been a while but we um i swear i helped stood up that server and essentially every user got the print to that cloud server it prints to the cloud server and then they go to the nearest multi-function printer put their type passcode and then the cloud server oh okay yeah i've heard of that stuff before i free different places called different things but yeah i cannot remember the name of that system they may come back to me may not who can who knows but i actually stood up that system um i stood up inventory systems i stood up network systems and while i was uh there uh we uh we actually had we had two big projects one we was moving to a new cola was moving from wood stream to qts so all of the servers all of the storage we moved all that stuff over to uh qts and that was my first exposure to a co-location like i didn't understand the idea of co-location until i started working the hodges mace job and i'm like they was like yeah i remember boss used to say all right yeah we're going to go to the colo i said what the heck is the color i was like i had no idea what i was talking about but you know i'm the system i'm the system's admin at the time i'm kind of like his head guy so i'm like i gotta pretend like i know what i'm doing i can't be embarrassing myself not knowing the stuff so uh but yeah real quick yeah you know okay google search just like what the heck is a color i thought that was just like a slang term that he said i didn't realize that's a legit thing so especially now that i'm working for one but uh we uh i get exposed to the system side of the network side and that's when i started thinking you know what networking is actually more fun this systems and then that's where now we circle back to the art of network engineering how i got into networking i get to that job doing the hybrid thing and i'm realizing that i enjoy network attacks more than our drawer system tasks sure and i said all right you know what i'm getting my ccna my butt steadied my butt off i probably studied for a year though now remember this is not the new ccna that's like borderline cakewalk this is the old cc they were using the command line here we go you were still in the command line you were still troubleshooting eigrp issues yeah like that ccna test was tough yeah adam i love the old ccna so much i did it twice you did it twice not because i wanted to i'll say that but because you had but you wasn't mad at you had to do it twice yeah no comment no call okay yeah no comment yeah hey everyone it's lexi aka trackit pacer or as my co-workers now know me that little gremlin that keeps crawling in and out of the server racks i have a question for you have you ever heard of the usnua so let me throw three topics at you number one network engineering number two no annoying sales pitches and number three beer does it get any better have you ever wished you could have someone to chat with in person about network design that isn't trying to sell something to you if your answer is yes then let me tell you you need to check out the usnua the us networking user association is a group of fellow network engineers that like to openly chat about all things networking and the added bonus there's no selling these user group meetings are completely devoid of oem agendas that means no pushy salespeople cornering you after the meeting trying to squeeze you for that next purchase order while you're just there to get mildly buzzed and talk about vxlan or something find out all the goodness of the usnua that's the u.s networking user association by going to usnua.com we hope to see you at the next meet up in your area so so yeah you started liking the network stuff how did it feel uh not that you weren't cool before but how did it feel to really become one of the cool kids oh i felt like i feel like what took me so long it felt like what took me so long to realize this because uh one thing about networking is that um and me and my one of my co-workers we talk about this all the time the thing about networking is that in the network world as you guys know networking follows a strict set of protocols a strict set of rules so it makes trouble shooting not easy but it makes troubleshooting very straightforward as long as you understand your layers of the osi model especially layer one two three and all that type in layer four because you know we're typically working layers one through four as long as you understand those layers troubleshooting is very straightforward when it comes to networking um in most cases whereas you just you just opened my eyes to something because i i went to college for computer science and i started sitting in the uh the programming classes the math classes and and things were just going over my head and i i finally sat in uh cisco network academy at the school that i went to and things just started clicking for me and i just took it at face value i'm like okay some of the stuff i just really get but what you just said there that the the structure that there that there is with the different layers because i always found my find myself doing that today is i never want to overlook layer one so i typically even if it's a quick look layer one work my way up so yeah i can really relate to that because there is that even though it's it's somewhat high level there is that structure that you can follow that makes it you know like you said not easy but easier to pick up so yeah i can really relate to that yeah charlie shoeing is just to me it was just more straightforward like when you're troubleshooting the windows server it could be a it could be you got to worry about passion issues the os gets corrupted uh nobody wants to reboot their firewalls and route them people reboot the server before they reboot a router yeah very true but um yeah so i get back to uh so hodges mace i start studying for my ccna so i'm like all right you know what that was that was around the time where i started transitioning from systems to networking because i wanted to do more that's what i started realizing i enjoyed the network of sideboarding systems um and then i i studied for a year for the old ccna and i'm glad i did that because like i could have just took a brain dump and got the test real quick but i was like what am i going to learn doing that like no i want to be a solid good network engineer so i was like you know what i'm actually going to take the time go through all the exam and check this uh at the time i had a gns3 so i stood up gns3 and i'm actually configuring on ospf eigrp and even basic bgp and all that type of stuff configurate interfaces and i mean just like learning the networking side it just became amazing to me because now it's like all right i know how to stand up and interface now i'm understanding the sub that and now because at the time i really wasn't all that good at subnetting even though even when i was a systems engineer i wasn't that good at subnetting um because you know everything is two five five two five five two five five zero just keep that's what everything is keep it simple stupid but in the networking world you actually need to know a little bit of subnet and so like just understanding what a slash 24 is what a slash 25 is what a slash 23 is and what that means and all that type of stuff it was just i just love learning that and i was like you know what nope i don't want to be a systems engineer no more i want to be a network engineer so um and technically i did do networking that had just made it like i said i was a hybrid person but big but um i uh but because i was a hybrid person i wasn't only networking i was networking systems help that's everything yeah i get my ccna i kid you not god's my witness i i get my ccna the very next day actually no i get my ccna i tell my boss hey i got my ccna he was like oh congratulations that's what's up blah blah blah blah blah so happy for you the very next day they laid me off oh shut up oh the very next day after i got my ccna they laid me off now it wasn't because i was a terrible worker now like that it wasn't like the other job where being the boss had beef or not like that no they laid me off because they had to do budget cuts for the company that's rough so i was like man i told my boss i was like man it's a good thing i got ccna huh he was like yeah it is so he gave me a reference i get back on the grind now the good thing is because they laid me off and it wasn't like no discipline or anything they gave me a four thousand dollar severance pay so they gave me a little severance pay and here's the thing i got my ccna and this was also around the time i first started getting on linkedin too um so i wasn't obviously nearly as active on linkedin as i am today but i didn't know that linkedin was a pretty decent tool um for job hunting and all that so that's when i started like getting my feet wet in linkedin when i worked at this hodges maze job and um i um put on there that hey i'm job hunting and all that and i said that i got my ccna i'm mcse i want to be a i want to be a network engineer i don't mind being a hybrid systems and network engineer as long as i'm doing networking because you know i'm trying to find a job now the cool thing was because of linkedin and this is when i started like taking linkedin serious i had a recruiter reach out to me on linkedin and this was the same recruiter that turned me down from the past because of that issue that i had with the manager from the first atlanta job that recruiter hits me up again saying hey look i got this uh systems vegetarian job for you but it looks like they want somebody who knows systems and networking i said perfect that's the type of job i want so i applied for it and i'm trying to get um i'm trying to get like unemployment but at the time i had so many people hit me up for interviews and recruiters hitting me up for job offers and i was like you know what me trying to apply for unemployment is missing opportunities to actually get a job so i say you know what screw the um unemployment because they will just give me a hard time anyway so you need to use your severance pay or you need to use uh this and you gotta do this and it'll just get on my nerves and i'm like you know what i'm done with y'all i'm just gonna go job i'm just gonna take my risk into a job plan yeah and then um i interviewed for a bunch of companies and then i had one company which was my last job the one before my current job they um they gave me an offer and it was 20 000 more than what my last job was so i was only out of i was only out of a job for a week i was only out of work for a week do you equate that to any any one given thing like do you think it was really the ccna that opened that door for you or just you had been in the game for a while now and you were starting to mass multiple different talents what what do you put that on so i will say the ccna was probably the thing that got the recruiter to speak to me so the recruiter saw that i had a ccna he said okay that's somebody i need to talk to i always equate certain degrees it's like i i kind of like use the restaurant analogy when you go to a restaurant when you pass by a restaurant and it smells really really good i consider the resumes and degree like the real good smell like that smells good i really need to go try that restaurant out and then your experience slash your personality that is the actual food right there so when you go inside the restaurant and you taste the food you'll say oh yeah this is delicious that's what i consider like the experience and the um what you'll call it um the uh the experience and your personality is like they uh is the equivalent of okay this is somebody that i want to work with so like the ccna i think that's what triggered the recruiter to reach out to me and saying hey look here's a job for you that i want to try to recruit you for but then ultimately it was my experience and my uh personality that uh attracted my last boss to me and they also had like a technical test where they asked like questions about exchange questions about firewalls questions about networking because it was a hybrid job uh man i did pretty well in the test and i guess he told me later that yeah a lot of people failed that test they do horrible and i actually one of the ones that they're really well honest he was like yeah i got to have this guy on my team and uh i interviewed with him one day and they gave me an offer like the next day wow i i love that analogy aj i gotta tell you man i i gotta finish the ccnp because i wanna smell good i love that too like you know you're right you when you pass by a restaurant and you smell that food you're like oh yeah i'm gonna wander in there and see what that's all about that's that's a great way because you're right like those are the things that start the conversations right like you know people sit there and say oh no you know i'll trust you and what you say you know but when you got certifications or a degree there's there's like a certain amount of like foundation already there that you're standing on yeah and key words too because you know with these recruiters they have they have um and i don't understand at a time but i understand it now recruiters they um they have criteria that they have to go by and they have to get people in at a certain amount of time so it's like okay this customer wants and customer me the company they want somebody who has a ccna or they want somebody who has this much experience so they do key searches like okay ccna click okay my name pops up because it shows i have a ccna yeah and those key searches are also um a big part of it um so a certification does not get you a job it just gets you to the interview 100 it helps you get to the interview it does not get you a job yep same with degrees same with degrees absolutely 70 degrees so uh i mean i know this is a very long testability very long story but uh yeah so i get that i do the um hybrid thing and i'm and this is where i start getting my experience with firewalls and networking because like that hybrid even those a hybrid systems networking job they saw me as a networking admin and i think that going back to the ccna thing to see ccna they told them okay this guy knows networking we're gonna have to do all our networking projects so i got a ton of network experience i did a lot of switch designs i did a lot of spine leaf um architecture designs for customers a lot of like isp circuit upgrades a lot of firewall upgrades um i even did a bgp i even did a bgp design for one cut for one of our larger customers um and then fast forward today that experience got me my actually during that job i got my ccnp and then that job got me my experience my job that experience with my ccmp got my job that i have today where i'm doing like the stuff and that's how i got to the field so that was a very long story so no man it was that was a great story i love a lot of the things that you talked about in there you know one of the things that we're big proponents here at the art of network engineering is mental health and you certainly went through a lot of like ups and downs and so what are some of the things that you do to like help your mental health right like you must have some hobbies and stuff like that things you do to unwind and and just help like you know keep it cool yeah i've been eyeballing that now all night you see that that's quite the setup you got back there yeah no music is definitely my outlet for um mental health um i do a lot of music a lot of um mixing and mastering um of other people's songs and all that anything in the electronic space so anything from rap to rb to edm i like trying to dance music too and i'm recently starting to learn how to mix and master even alternative music like alternative and rock and all that too so that's been a new experience for me uh but i love doing music um that's why i got my little studio back there and uh and then you know i'm kind of a spiritual man of faith as well so i do a lot of prayer a lot of walking praying meditation um that uh that definitely helps with my mental health uh and especially there are the times when things got stressful or when things got um when um things got uncertain or even when i had problems with people that i worked with and all that um a lot of a lot of time praying to god and a lot of time just being by myself listening to like low-fat hip-hop or a mix of the song or something like that that's how i was able to keep my uh mental health intact um and then always keeping my why um always making sure that i always kept my why at the forefront of everything i do like why am i doing this yeah i'm doing this because i know how it feels like to be scraping by check the check and i don't ever want to return that i don't ever want to return to that again so because of that i need to always stay abreast with this uh technology yeah yeah man that that's that's very powerful stuff right there i mean and i think a lot of people forget to think about like why am i doing this you know like i'm studying for dessert because somebody told me to or because you know i hear that's how i'm gonna get a job no your your why is is just like you said like i've lived at a point where i was scripting by paycheck to paycheck my wife called me and said we can't give our son a bath tonight like that's why yeah you know that's that's a powerful probably the most powerful motivator i've ever heard yep and that was my why and now i'm at the point where i'm content with my job now studying for my ccie now uh so maybe i'll come back on here again after i get my ccie i'll tell you how i'll tell you how that i'll tell you how that went we'll check in with you after you get your numbers i love it yeah so uh but nah that's the why is definitely uh a big motivator um not only for the grind that i go through every day but also to keep my like you said my mental health yeah intact it's like hey if my mental health is not attacked that i can't address my why and that's usually my motivator to um keep everything intact oh man adam this has been a fun conversation is uh is there anything that we should have asked you we've talked about an awful lot tonight so is there is there anything that we didn't cover that we should have talked about really can't think of anything right now yeah no i mean yeah there's things i mean there's things i left out but i think uh the gist of it y'all got my uh yeah i got my story how i got in the game and uh i think uh we're good hands awesome awesome well this has been a fun conversation largely in part to our patreon family joining us and hanging out with us if you're interested in joining our patreon program you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of netenge check out the different tiers there and sign up and we do appreciate your support of everything we do here on the podcast and from the traffic network he's asking adam where can we find your mixes are they available can we uh can we check out some of your work you got a portfolio online i do have mixes but give me some time to work all that out i mean as as business owners you guys understand the good infrastructure is key to oh sure making sure that things last so i gotta i'm still working out some stuff and then i will uh i will definitely promote that when the time's right awesome and we'll be happy to help you do that from our our twitter account we'll sing your praises and share your work adam where can uh people find more of your your work are you on the socials got a blog yeah so right now linkedin is probably the best way to get a hold of me um that's where i found you yep like that that's the best way it'll be uh late day dot com slash en slash adam87 um that's probably the best way to get in contact with me at the moment and then once i get my infrastructures up with the socials and with the music and everything else i got going on that that's when i'll have a little bit more of a social media presence for people to get in contact with me but linkedin for sure will probably be the key thing especially for it stuff awesome well we'll go ahead and put uh the linkedin links and if by the time this show publishes adam has more to share with us we'll include all of that stuff in the show notes so you go right back to your podcatcher tap on the linkedin link and uh you know connect with adam and follow him and see what he's been up to adam again thank you so much for coming on the show this has been uh such a great time we appreciate your time this evening thank you and i appreciate you guys having me yeah absolutely all right we will catch you next time on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast thanks for joining us hey there friends we hope you enjoyed listening to that episode just as much as we did recording it if you want to hear more make sure you subscribe to the show and your favorite podcatcher you can also give that little bell rascal a little ringy dingy so you know when we release new episodes if you're social like we are you can follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net inch that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on that weaving web that is the internet at art of network engineering dot com there you'll find our show notes and some blog articles from the host guests and other friends who just like getting their thoughts down on that virtual paper until next time friends thanks for listening