Career Shifts in Network Engineering

Speaker 1 0:16

This is the art of network engineering podcast . In this podcast , we explore tools , technologies and technology . We integrate new information that will expand your skill sense and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers . Welcome to the art of network engineering . I am AJ Murray . At your Blinky , blinky on X , that doesn't sound right on Twitter and I am thrilled to be joined this evening by the one , the only , andy Laptef . He is at . Andy Laptef , andy , how the hell are you ? This is ? This is the first time we're recording here in 2024 .

Speaker 1 1:01

Yeah it feels good to be back behind the old microphone . I had to blow the dust off it .

Speaker 2 1:05

People hear of it . People hear this episode in 2025 , but it's good to be recording in 2024 .

Speaker 1 1:11

You know , taking a month off , we've kind of burned through our catching up a little bit , so we're catching up . So that means these episodes might be a little bit more timely , a little bit more relevant .

Speaker 2 1:22

I'm good , aj . It's always great to be here . I'm two months since being laid off and I just started a contract gig this week , so that's been really nice . I'm doing some TME work , which it's funny because that's what I wanted to do at Juniper and Bouchon talked me out of it . So now I'm doing some TME stuff and really enjoying it . So , yeah , yeah , so contract work right now still , still interviewing with , with all the folks . But yeah , man , life is good how you doing .

Speaker 1 1:49

Doing well , doing very well . I am officially one month in at Zscaler on my job .

Speaker 1 1:56

Very excited , so I took a position with Zscaler as a demo architect . I'm on the sales enablement team supporting sales engineers across the company . We have an entire Zscaler tenant dedicated to demoing all the features , and so we can help the SEs set up all sorts of stuff to show to our customers . So it's it's really cool . Not as network engineer heavy as I used to be , still using a lot of my networking knowledge , which is great but I get to do a lot more than just networking play with some really cool fun stuff , and I'm learning an awful lot in these first few months here .

Speaker 2 2:32

There's so many jobs in tech and networking is relevant and just about all of them right , because everything runs the network . So it's cool how you've pivoted to take a zero trust security architecture , basically , right Zscaler right and the job itself .

Speaker 1 2:46

It's a lot of like creating labs and demonstrating stuff , and I've done a ton of that on my blog . I did a ton of that while I was teaching , so it's really nice to be able to like bring that into the everyday right .

Speaker 2 2:56

Yeah , you're gonna be securing networks and infrastructures right , and who better to be there than career net , net end ? So that's great man . I'm happy for you .

Speaker 1 3:03

Yeah , yeah , thank you . Also joining us is Tim Bertino . He is at Tim Bertino Tim looking good in the the Cisco NFL jacket there . I like that .

Speaker 3 3:13

Yes , yes , you all know I'm a Kool-Aid drinker . I too am new to the role . I'm a few months in been doing some a decent amount of travel for training , but I'm really thankful for the program they put together for us . It's really helped me not only get to know Cisco but get to know the sales engineer role , which is really helpful because it's brand new to me , right . So it's been good . Life in general has been good . It's crazy that my wife saw the pop up that said you know , first recording of 2024 . And I'm like , are we that lazy ? But no , life's good . And I got to ask Andy so , contract role , technical marketing engineer . Did you call Bouchon and give him the ? How do you like me now ?

Speaker 2 4:04

No , not at all .

Speaker 2 4:05

I'm very grateful for Mike Stun for my career no man , I'm friend of the show , west Kennedy , who was on the TME special . Oh yeah , he introduced me to Mike Bouchon , interestingly enough , and when I announced that I got laid off on LinkedIn , he reached out to me and said hey , I'm , I'm working at this place transformation continuum with Joe Onisic . You know why don't you come over and check it out and talk to them ? So that's that's kind of where I am . But just , you know , right , the community , people you know , and helping each other . I mean , he , I still don't know why West keeps helping me , but I'm really appreciative of it and grateful . And it's just the power of this community , right ? I mean , I've told you a hundred times before like I used to sell used cars and people would steal your deals on your day off , like there was no help . The community , right . So I'm just continually amazed by the tech community and how , how nice people are to each other and willing to help . It's really awesome , awesome , yeah , well , I think without further ado .

Speaker 1 4:56

let's get to our guest . He's been waiting so patiently . I'm very excited to welcome Kevin to the show . Kevin is a network engineer on TikTok and he has quite the audience . He does some fantastic content . I'm sure everyone in our audience has heard of him . If you haven't , please go check him out , kevin . Thank you so much for joining us tonight .

Speaker 4 5:16

No , thank you for having me . I'm excited , it's cool .

Speaker 3 5:19

I will also add probably probably the best mustache in the business .

Speaker 4 5:24

I wouldn't go that far but it's , it's growing on me Literally . I see what you did there . That's great . So , kevin , you're a network engineer .

Speaker 1 5:34

But if you want to elaborate a little bit more on that , what do you do ? What's the day to day look like outside of TikTok ?

Speaker 4 5:40

Yeah so I'm a network engineer by title but I kind of focus on the firewall right now . I'm in a new position the last six months or so and they hired me on to be one of two people who are really head spear spearheading the firewall team and it's been fun . It's been a fun six months catching up and learning new stuff and the world of checkpoint . I have was a Palo Alto guy before this position , so I'm learning checkpoint now and as long as I'm learning something new , I'm happy .

Speaker 1 6:10

Is this a relatively new role for you ?

Speaker 4 6:12

Like how recently you stepped into that for me being a network engineer or at this position .

Speaker 1 6:20

At this particular focused on the firewall . Oh gosh .

Speaker 4 6:22

Yeah , so I don't know if you want to go back to , like my , my career as it spans , but absolutely .

Speaker 4 6:29

Yeah . So my current firewall , like focus , is pretty relatively new . That job I had before this . I was a general network engineer and you know we did like a little bit of everything and one of my projects there was to spin up a WAN firewall Palo Alto WAN firewall and I had just joined the team and had no knowledge whatsoever basically what to do . I was just giving this box and they said , okay , your first project is to spin this up , make it work . And I did that kind of started really enjoying working on firewalls and then when it was time for me to move on for new opportunities , that project kind of led me into my current position where they looked at and go , okay , you have firewall experience , you have fire , you know doing this , so let's hire him on . Very cool yeah .

Speaker 2 7:15

I have never touched a firewall .

Speaker 4 7:17

Really .

Speaker 2 7:18

Yeah , I know right , like I've worked for these . Well right , I've worked for these organizations that were so big , like that was their own team right , and like we didn't have access . We couldn't see them and it was really frustrating troubleshooting because I couldn't even see where they were . So if I would have to prove out my transit network and then we'd have to get firewall engaged .

Speaker 4 7:36

So it's one of those things I wish I did get experience in production , I think it's curious , it's almost like climbing up that stack , right Like now you're up at layer four and yeah , it's interesting how , as you go up your career in network engineering , your scope gets smaller and smaller and smaller and you start specializing . But I'm kind of curious was your firewall team under security or under networking ? Because I've seen it both .

Speaker 2 7:58

Stop me , I'm going to say security I mean it was security because we had , we had LAN teams , we had WAN teams and then we had security , which was , which was firewalls , not to be confused with the cyber sec folks Right right , so there were multiple security teams , I guess . But yeah , they were dedicated , Like we had a dedicated Palo RA or what do they call it . You know resident engineer like Hari , and how does it compare from Palo to Checkpoint ? Because I've heard people going from Checkpoint to Palo and being happy about that . You've gone .

Speaker 4 8:25

Yeah , it's . You know it's easier to use . It's like one of my old coworkers described it as like baby's first firewall , just because it's super simple to use . Set up , install the . The my biggest issue so far is the hardware with . It is just not as powerful as Palo Alto . Like they , you can't turn on all the blades without it . You know almost crashing and chugging along . So that part's been getting interested in you to like trying to figure out what blades we actually need and you know , do that dance . But yeah , so far it's been been pretty good .

Speaker 2 8:57

Do you support network and firewall or you segment off now and there's a separate network that you do both ?

Speaker 4 9:02

Yeah , yeah , so it's

Network Engineering Career Inspirations

Speaker 4 9:04

so . I work for the public sector and so I don't know how . I honestly have never been other than two years at an ISP , which is a whole different world into the corporate world . So I've never been a part where , like , we've been that siloed where we have a total team dedicated to routing or whatever you know . So we've always had to kind of be a journeyman and do a little bit of everything and then have like one or two SMEs on the team that are kind of we go to our isolation points but kind of done everything .

Speaker 2 9:30

Does the public sector mean the government ?

Speaker 4 9:32

It can mean education , it can mean government . It's anything that's publicly funded , like tax dollars .

Speaker 1 9:38

Awesome . Well , kevin , let's go back a little bit and I want to understand what got you into network engineering , what kind of inspired you to to jump into this as a career ?

Speaker 4 9:46

Yeah , so when I was a kid I was an 80s , 90s kid , so that was like the heyday of the internet . You know , internet just came out . It was super cool . We had AOL on a disk that came in the mail and that was exciting and how many of those did you put in the microwave for fun ? None , but I used to use frisbees and threw my brother a lot . Those things could cause damage man .

Speaker 1 10:10

That is very nice .

Speaker 4 10:15

But yeah , I was like so I was super into the internet chat rooms , which now , as a father , I don't even want to think about , but video games , all that stuff and the internet was super cool to me . I wanted to do something with the internet , that much I knew . I didn't know what though there was at the time . I knew that there was video games , there was browsers and there was like some applications you can , you can do stuff on the internet with , but that's pretty much it . So I was like , okay , well , programming I , I tried to do a little bit of that . That wasn't for me . I'm not a . I'm not a programmer , um , and so I was like okay , well , you're among friends , you are .

Speaker 2 10:52

This is kind of the same place here .

Speaker 4 10:56

Um . So I was like , okay , web browsing is the internet , so I want to design websites , that'll be what I do . So I went to college , got a degree in it , uh , specializing in web design , and hated it , hate every second of web design . So I was like , okay , well , now I'm kind of screwed . I have an it degree , I like technology , but I have no idea what to do . So I did what any one person would do and become a teacher .

Speaker 4 11:23

Um , I was a tech resource teacher , uh , in a school and I helped , you know , uh , teachers learn how to do PowerPoint , teach kids how to , you know , write reports uh , fix printers uh , replace hard drives , that kind of basic IT stuff . Um , and that's actually if you have time for a story , I don't want to take too much time . But , um , the the spark that got me into networking was that I had to , um , fix a computer lab Uh , a teacher said that you know , hey , during peak times my internet computer lab uh is going really slow , a lot of packet loss , there's stuff going on , and at the time I had , you know , I majored in web design and I had no idea past the basic stuff . So I was like , okay , I'll take a look at it , but I have no idea what I'm doing . So I went during the class that was having issues crawled under the desk , um , found that they had , daisy , changed a bunch of hubs together and I was looking at the front of the hubs and I saw green lights . Um , which to me in that time I knew green lights meant good . Uh , but there was a little collision light that was red and that was blinking really fast and I was like , okay , I know red's not good . So , um , I went back and started googling , because that's what you do and you find a problem . You have no idea what it is .

Speaker 4 12:36

I started googling and that led me down to a huge rabbit hole of collision domains and what's , what is a hub , what is a switch and all that kind of stuff . And from there I was like , yeah , this is what I want to do . This is super freaking cool . And just the more I learned about it , the more I wanted to learn about it . And so I was like , okay , I need to quit my job here and start going down that path . I don't know where that path is , what's the end goal there , but I know networking .

Speaker 4 13:01

So I got a job at the ISPs knock because to me internet like there's not a lot of options you have ISPs is the internet and I don't know what else . So I was very ignorant , I had no idea . Um , and so I went to the knock , got a job there with my IT degree and from there I just kept learning more and more , got my CCNA , went to a network engineering team there , got promoted and then from there I went into the campus network with a university , got a job university and then from there now I'm at Hillsborough County government . So it was a fast trajectory . Once I got my CCNA and into figuring out what I actually wanted to do , it was pretty like two or three years each jump until I am wearing now .

Speaker 2 13:46

I feel like I've heard that I fell in love with networking story over and over again . Right , it's almost everybody in networking , right ? Like , without question seems to I was . I was going along and I don't know . I went to school and I like tech and blah , blah , blah , and then I started to learn about networking and my head was just like I mean , the same thing happened to me , right , I was a cable guy for an ISP and I wanted to know what all these devices were connecting to and I started talking to people like my head like wait what ? And you know , oh my God , people just describing to me what happens , like to set up a session . I'm like , oh my God , this is like such a cool . I felt like I could see the matrix , you know .

Speaker 4 14:19

Like whoa stuff we all take for granted .

Speaker 2 14:22

Like it just works .

Speaker 4 14:23

Yeah , I quit it . So like being in Wizard of Oz , you know you pull back the wizard's drape or whatever and you see it's a person like you're like this is a magic thing that just works . Until you start looking behind , you go , wow , this is really cool and this is something I could do , Like I could help design the Internet , and it's just like it's crazy to me . It's still crazy . I still love it .

Speaker 2 15:45

You brought me back . I remember those AOL discs and I had a hub at my dad's and the red light used to blink like crazy . And you know , at the time I didn't know what the hell that meant . All the computers were were working . How was your time at an ISP knock ? I spent two years at a knock and man that's . That was a hell of an experience for me .

Speaker 4 16:01

Honestly , it's the

Experience at an ISP Knock

Speaker 4 16:02

most fun job I've ever had . I still the the , the friends or the team that . I had there Sorry .

Speaker 1 16:10

No I love you .

Speaker 4 16:13

You know what it was ? The coworkers . I had everything on fire all the time .

Speaker 2 16:16

This is great . You have adrenaline problems , Kevin .

Speaker 4 16:23

There was a time where it's pretty . There was a time where it was just me and my shift leader and just just two of us and we held down the entire knock for over a Christmas holiday and that was . That was fun and cool and also exhausting , but yeah , so my time at the knock was the most fun job I've ever had . It was really cool coworkers , we were on a team , so we worked really close together and some of those guys I still hang out with , I have game night once a month with some of them . So there it was . I don't know , it was a great experience for me working as a network engineer up . Not so much , but it was one of those things where , like I knew I wanted to at that point become a network engineer , so I made the jump . But the ISP it was . I was a overnight which just killed my body . I couldn't do overnights Same and I want to do that for , yeah , I did on meds for a year and I couldn't sleep .

Speaker 4 17:16

It was awful .

Speaker 2 17:17

I couldn't sleep . I had a pain in my stomach the entire year like I couldn't sleep . I couldn't think it was awful . The blackout curtains , all the stuff they said to do but I couldn't sleep .

Speaker 4 17:25

It was terrible , yeah , yeah .

Speaker 2 17:29

But do you think like for me , I really learned how to troubleshoot at the knock , because you're just fixing broken crap all day , is that ? Oh yeah , it's all break fit .

Speaker 4 17:36

You know it's , yeah it's , and I got to a point where it was easy Like I . You know it's one of those things . You just learn the platform and it . You know it's a bad rep because you are literally looking at a screen . You're looking at lights come on , or you know red or yellow or green . You hit a button , create a ticket and you escalate it . You know that's the basics of a knock .

Speaker 4 17:58

But I think if you're doing the knock correctly , if you're working for the not correctly , you are following that ticket , you are looking at what they're doing , you're getting as much information as possible , you're doing your show commands . Any access you have they give you you should be using , and so I think you get what you get out of it . So I really enjoy . I learned a lot . I love the , the knock and my experience . I advocate for it . If I have a tick tock that tells about my experience and how to become a network engineer , one path to get there , and I I always advocate for the knock . I know it gets a bad rep , but it's a great job .

Speaker 2 18:33

Yeah , and I guess I'm just saying that tongue in cheek because I , you know , I was at I was a gigantic knock and everything was on fire all the time and and mids was tough and and and you know it probably comes down to leadership , to like we were just always getting yelled at , to like get the outage fixed faster . And I'm like I got a 300 count fiber break that some backhoe hit like I'm sitting at a desk , the fiber crews on their way , like what do you want me to do ?

Speaker 4 18:54

Oh my God , you know .

Speaker 2 18:55

I know , I know what my job is .

Speaker 1 18:57

You know , so for me .

Speaker 2 18:59

I think it was just because the culture of us being leaned on , thinking that it would be fixed faster . But yeah , like honestly , looking back , I had a buddy Montsour the same thing he's showing me like dude . Look at all the stuff that like he was really into . Like dude , we're getting paid to get an education and that was really amazing , right .

Speaker 4 19:15

Yeah , yeah for sure . That's also part of the reason why I left . The private industry is because of that like pressure . Once you , once you go to the public sector , you kind of realize like , wow , this is , this is easy , as , like , comparatively it's not easy work , but it's easy where there's no pressure . You don't have millions on the line where you know we're going to lose this much profit . So it's a lot of pressure .

Speaker 3 19:39

So , Kevin , step us through the decision process around doing the CCNA . And the reason I ask is because anytime someone decides to go after a certification , it's a time investment . Oftentimes it's a . It's a financial investment for the individual as well . So what was the ? What was the motivation behind it ? Was it strictly learning and growing and learning new things ? Was it I want to do this to get advancement ? What was the thought process there ?

Speaker 4 20:08

So when I was trying to find information about what the internet is literally is , google , like you know , start looking at internet websites and that kind of stuff and Cisco is like the main vendor , like if you , if you Google any kind of networking , cisco is going to pop up as the number one or you know , depending on the opinions , but basically it's number one . So I was like , ok , well then Cisco should be the one to teach me what to do if they're the most used vendor , the most popular result and getting on results . So I looked at the certifications and it was like , ok , well , they have a , I think , cce and T at the time , certification , which I think they've now gone away with . But I was like , ok , well , I'll start there . And so I ordered the books and did everything myself and just wanted to learn . And it wasn't like I need this to get a job or to advance . It was literally just I want to know what this , what you know , what this stuff does , how to do it .

Speaker 4 21:05

And luckily it's helped me . It was really got my CCNA is when I got my got promoted to network engineering . But it wasn't ever like a super intent , it was never like I need this to become a network engineer , because most of the network engineers at the time , at least at the ISP weren't CCNA . They've just been there for , you know , 20 years and didn't have any certifications at all , so I didn't think I actually needed it . But it's definitely helped me in my career and I've re-upped it every four years now . So I've held it for four different iterations , or three different iterations Wow For you ?

Speaker 3 21:41

Yeah , that's cool . So you have you talked about firewalling and that's something that you've kind of started specializing in . Do you feel that network security was something that , after you learned how the internet works , was something you wanted to jump into , or was it something that was kind of thrust upon you at a certain point ?

Speaker 4 22:00

Yeah , it was it was definitely thrust . There's a lot of thrust in . I had no idea that sounds bad . That's what I mean is I had no idea what I was getting into . It was just like here take this Before this I had been a network admin and I had just done basically layer one and layer two stuff , you know , rack and stack and configuring switches .

Speaker 4 22:26

So layer four I had no experience whatsoever , other than I knew what a firewall does , but not how to configure it

Certifications and Career Paths in IT

Speaker 4 22:33

or really the inner workings of it . So it was definitely thrust upon me like , hey , if you want this job , this job is a lot of trying to figure stuff out and no one's gonna like hold your hand . You got to go out there , you got to do some research , you got to find answers for stuff . So here's something you don't know and good luck . And luckily I was able to , you know , look at the Palo Alto manuals and talk to coworkers and figure stuff out . But I think there was definitely a thrust and it's been a good experience for me because it kind of gave me that chance to prove to myself that I can be thrust upon and still do it . I don't know where this conversation is going right now I'm distracting myself with the word . I like all the thrust things . There's too much thrust thing going on here .

Speaker 2 23:23

So much thrust thing , I'm just talking about it now .

Speaker 1 23:29

I just want to circle back to certifications a little bit . Did you take the certifications any further , or do you just have the CCNP ?

Speaker 4 23:36

You know . So I've been studying for the CCNP for the last probably eight years or so . You know it's not a priority because I don't think it will help me in my job , my career at all , and the things in it aren't necessarily going to help me in my current job with my skills or knowledge right . So it's one of those things where by the time I get around to doing it , just to do it , there's been a new iteration and they've recycled it and it's a new test . So then I start over and I get the books and I start studying and I'm like , okay , I got a project to work that's going on and I'm going to take the backseat and all that kind of stuff and it kind of just gets delayed . But it is something that you know . I'm currently studying for the CCNP security . Whether that actually gets taken or not , I don't know , but I'm currently studying for it and I'll probably sit for the test for the Cisco Live . I'm going to Cisco Live this year .

Speaker 4 24:30

So at least I'll sit forward and check it out , but I don't know beyond that . So one of the things where I think you have to , you have to the more advanced or senior you get in your position I think , the less there is a need for certifications . And with the Cisco certifications they are so broad . You know , I'm used to back in the day where you had a CCNP and it was route switch troubleshoot To me . That seemed more like I don't know honed in that you could really pick one and kind of do it . But the way it's so broad now it's , I'm having a hard time staying for it . Of course , bonkers , you can just come out and say it it's ridiculous .

Speaker 2 25:41

How much is in that book right ?

Speaker 4 25:43

Yeah , I mean it's cool , it's a huge test .

Speaker 2 25:44

But yeah , but I really like the old route switch , t-shoot you could focus on , you know , at least a layer at a time or technology stack at a time . And it sounds like you use certification studying for kind of how I do . It's really like it's not even for the cert , like you said , right , you have the experience . It's more just like hey , I want to learn some security and I really like the certs because it's it's school right here's the curriculum and here's the book and here's some labs . It's .

Speaker 4 26:07

I got into a , an argument and an argument , but a disagreement with a fellow creator who basically said that certifications are worthless . You know , don't waste your time on them , it's better to that doesn't sound like somebody on TikTok .

Speaker 4 26:21

Well , they weren't selling a program , that's that is . So it was a little different . But yeah , basically saying that it's worthless , and my argument was like at the very least , even if you don't take the certification , you don't go through with paying the money and all that kind of stuff . It's a curriculum , it's a guide to help you get organized and studying at the very least . So it can't hurt . You know the books , the videos . They're not that expensive . Most jobs will pay for them . There's really no harm , and least going over and having a structured learning .

Speaker 2 26:48

I think it's funny that people that get mad for you wanting to learn something Right . You want to learn stuff . Yeah , it's stupid . Again , circle back to like when I was a cable guy . They all told me I was wasting my time getting my CCNA and that certification opened the door for me . That gave me career to working .

Speaker 4 27:04

Yeah , it's just projection . There's the same people who don't want to do the certifications , and so they're going to make anyone feel bad who's doing it Like they sound threatened by it right .

Speaker 2 27:13

Like oh sir so you don't need them . Bro , like , why are you so upset ? I just want to learn some stuff .

Speaker 1 27:22

I come from the partner world and certs were gold right . So we needed the certs that the OEMs would say hey , you need to have so many certified people on staff if you want to be . You know this level of a partner . So it was always some edict on here go learn this , go get this or go do that . And and I've transitioned to the OEM world and I'm like , oh , thank God , no certs . And then I get to my training , it's like , okay , here's a cert , we need you to go get .

Speaker 3 27:46

Yeah , aj , they weren't just gold , they were mandatory gold .

Speaker 2 27:51

Hey , Kevin , I wanted to ask do you touch any data center or cloud , or I know it sounds like your enterprise campus up to security firewall .

Speaker 4 28:00

No , no cloud in the data center . We have data center . I stay away from the data center . Just that's one of those things where , like , it's a , it's a big bite to bite off and I just have not gone down that path , and so that's one of those where , like , I will gladly take a step back , let someone else , you know , be that to me on data center and just do all that I don't .

Speaker 2 28:20

You have , like data center , people that can support you right , like if you're building a tunnel in somewhere and you need the keys on the other side , or you can have some head ends for you . Yeah , cool yeah .

Speaker 4 28:28

And we usually have like , at least for now , we have an architect , like current position , who's kind of the test taken on the data center as his , as his baby , and so you know everything goes through him anyway , so it .

Speaker 2 28:40

Speaking of thrusting , I got thrust into data center . I didn't want to go into data center . I really liked Tim , I really liked enterprise and you know . Then they made us data center people and they go all right , because it is a big bite , like you said , and there's just so many technology stacks and so many things that and the blast radius is huge . You break an office , you know 30 people can't get online . You break some of the data center . It's like , oh God broke the world .

Speaker 4 29:06

The whole new world over there . It's just like going from ISP to , you know , enterprise or whatever . It's just completely . It's a different architecture , different everything . It's just . It's a whole different world .

Speaker 2 29:16

Are they in cloud ?

Speaker 4 29:17

No , not for the network it's . You know there's . There are Azure servers and that kind of stuff , but just taking away from cloud too . Cloud is going to take all of our jobs . That's what I've been hearing .

Speaker 2 29:28

If cloud doesn't , AI will yeah exactly the AI in the cloud .

Speaker 3 29:32

So , now that you're now that you're six months or so into this new role , what are some of the things that you're seeing that you want to keep looking into that are different than what you've seen before ? What do you in reference of what ? What do you mean Just in reference to the new environment ? So you're you're getting settled into this new role . What are , what are some things that are different that you are seeing now in the public sector that are different from previous roles ?

Speaker 4 29:59

you've had man , so I've . I came from the public sector before those two , so I'm kind of I'm very used to the public sector and how things work and it's it's honestly kind of every place is the same in the public sector .

Speaker 2 30:15

Is that a choice , kev Like , do you work in the public sector on purpose ? You know it's there's .

Speaker 4 30:19

So I first went to . I left the ISP that I was working nights and shift work and I was the only person on my shift and I had , at the time , a two year old and a newborn and I was like , you know , I I need to be there for the kids . My wife at the time was going to go kill me . She was doing all the feedings herself and all that stuff . So I was like , no , I want to go somewhere where I can , you know , take off and if I have kids or sick or whatever , and not have to worry about . I get six vacation days a year and all that stuff . So , yeah , I went to the public sector because I had been a teacher . I knew it , I knew the system , I knew the retirement system . I was already in FRS , the Florida Retirement System , so it was a safe thing to go into while I had really young kids and my job there is a network I hadn't been for .

Speaker 4 31:07

The university ended up being like a super fun job . I was touching equipment , I was running fiber , all the stuff that I had never done at the ISP . The ISP was all remote . I was sitting at a terminal all day just staring at a screen and here I was racking and stacking . You know , I was actually able to plug in a flash drive and boot up an iOS from the flash drive . It's just little stuff , but stuff that I had never done before because it was physical .

Speaker 4 31:31

And then , yeah , just from there , I got promoted to network engineering team and I've just been staying in that , because now I am in the FRS system , I'm in the retirement system , I have a pension plan and I really like the people there that aren't there for the money , they aren't there for the pressure and , to you know , they all have kind of a . I feel like I have a common mission that's bigger than themselves , not just , hey , I want to get my money , I'm out for me and then I'm out . So it feels a little better . I don't know , it could be in my head , I could be trying to justify it to myself , but I don't know . I enjoy it .

Speaker 4 32:07

I actually got . I posted a TikTok today of my progression , my career progression , because I was coming on the show and I was going to like , okay , they're probably going to ask me , you know how I got here . So I want to do a transparency , a salary transparency about working in the public sector being a network engineer and there are so many comments saying that I'm underpaid and I'm like , oh , you know , I'm a network admin , I make $250,000 in California . And I'm like , oh , it's great for you . It's not about that .

Speaker 2 32:37

Well , yeah , there's cost of living too , right , and I did see that video you put out and that I mean it all rang true with my experience too , and like where you're at now and you know where you live and what you should be making . Yes , if you're living in the valley and you're rents $7,000 a month , places pay more , right , like that guy make it $200,000 is barely able to , you know , afford anything . I really like that .

Speaker 2 33:00

really like that framing of like a greater mission , right , because I've often thought it'd be cool to like work in like a healthcare system or a hospital or you know same kind of reason , right Like there's just a there's a greater mission , You're serving the greater good , You're enabling services on this network that is maybe impacting lives in some sense , which , you know I've never really had that in my career , you know , so far it's really just been making , you know , Fortune 100 companies even richer , right .

Speaker 4 33:24

But yeah , that's my mission sounds really cool .

Speaker 4 33:27

I can't , I can't . You know you think about your work and how you spend the majority of your life working and it's hard for me to justify that as okay . I'm taking time away from my family , I'm putting the majority of my life into this thing and what am I doing ? I'm just making , you know , rich people richer and for a little bit more money . You know , I don't feel like in my environment . I'm not sacrificing . I'm still making a good money , I'm still able to live , but I'm able to , at the end of the day , go okay , I'm hopefully making a change . I'm hopefully making some kind of difference where I'm not just , you know , I quit it back to where I was an ISP and it was all about money keeping customers happy so that they keep paying their bill and so they keep making money .

Speaker 2 34:08

Tim , did you have that feeling when you were ? You were at a hospital system for a really long time . Did you ever get the feeling that you know there was a greater good that everybody was serving ? It wasn't just you know , money , stuff .

Speaker 3 34:19

Yeah , that's a good point , Andy , and that's actually , you know , one of the reasons to stick around , because you actually felt like there was a purpose . Like Kevin just said , money is a big part of why we work right , but there's got to be more to it than that , and I feel like what I've been taught is that people inherently have to understand the why , and not only understand the why but believe in it . And I think it's much easier to do that when you're in an industry that is , you know , for the greater good , serving people at the end of the day . So that's , I think that's something working in those kinds of industries public sector healthcare that that maybe helps you sleep a little bit better at night , even when it gets tough . You're like , yes , it's , it's tough right now . We got a lot of problems , we're trying to work through things , but at the end of the day , we're the . Some of the pain is for a good reason , right .

Speaker 4 35:12

Makes those two AM phone calls that you have to wake up for a little easier to digest when you know that just to bot that much . It does help a little bit , though , you know if the fire stations go down and you know it's important , you know making a difference even though it's yeah , you're here for a reason that makes sense to you and and to others .

Speaker 3 35:33

So , talking about the greater good , I want to shift this a little bit and start discussing your TikTok channel and why you put out some of the content that you publish on TikTok .

Speaker 4 35:46

Yeah . So

Bringing Awareness to Network Engineering

Speaker 4 35:48

I joined TikTok about 10 months ago and it was the time during where , like , twitter was being bought by Elon and was going to have changes and people were kind of leaving the platform and so I didn't want to go to like Mastodon or all these like weird apps , but I want to stay social . So it's like , okay , what apps can I join ? Then still be social . And my daughter is 13 and she was like you know everyone's on TikTok , you should join TikTok . So I was like , okay , I'll get on TikTok and check it out and of course , I gravitate towards the tech stuff . I don't gravitate towards like people dancing and all that kind of stuff .

Speaker 4 36:24

But I was looking for tech stuff and I couldn't find anything . You know it . It was , I think , three or four creators that were like networking focused , but most of it was people who were programming or cybersecurity or cloud cloud . I have a couple of people from cloud but like vast majority wasn't the typical network engineer stuff . So I was like , okay , there's not much of a social aspect to this then , if I'm only friends with three different people and it's about as far as you can get .

Speaker 4 36:52

So I was like , okay , well , I'm going to create the content and so hopefully , you know , people will find me instead of having to go find people . And I didn't have a point to it other than that at first I just want to be social and I quickly realized that I was starting to make content for me like little me , like 20 year old me , where I was kind of just explaining what I was doing and trying to showcase what network engineers do and what kind of tools we use and that kind of stuff to bring awareness to that we have a job , that networking engineering exists , because when I was a kid I had no idea , you know , it was the like I said it was websites and video games and that's pretty much it . And so , yeah , it was important for me to start bringing awareness to engineering and network engineering and kind of make it cool again . Be on a cool platform , tiktok , where kids are going to see it , and bring awareness and make it cool .

Speaker 1 37:49

I love the mission . You know and you're not the first creator that I've heard say that and it's very evident that we do need to make network engineering cool again and bring that awareness to it . But what's kind of shocking to me about that is why do we need to do that ? I mean , network engineering today is so much more than it has ever been . You know , for the longest time it was just a shell and a console cable , but now there's so much more to it than ever . Why do we need to continuously try to lure people into it ?

Speaker 4 38:21

I'm not trying to lure them into benefit society or the job itself . I'm doing this solely for the kids that are looking for direction , the ones that are like I like tech . I enjoy technology , but I have no idea what any this is , and I think one of the cool things about TikTok versus other platforms is that it force feeds you content . It doesn't . You don't . In your front TikTok , you don't go searching for networking or whatever . You're just on your feed and you're scrolling and it will try to give you videos that it thinks you like . So if you're a 20 year old kid and you're scrolling TikTok and you are into video games and whatever , it might feed you one of my videos talking about networking and you have no idea that networking was a job , that it was even something that you could do , and now you have this random video , this guy talking about it , and you're like maybe that's kind of cool . You click on his profile , watch other videos and it gives you that like that , fall in love , like aha , what is this cool thing you're talking about moment , and I think I'm trying to give that to people that wouldn't otherwise get that experience .

Speaker 4 39:24

I didn't get that experience . I didn't . You know it wasn't until I was in my career already and my first job really to do that . If I had figured that out when I was 20 , you know , I think it would have helped me a lot . So I'm trying to just help people . I'm not doing it to like I don't know . I don't have an end goal of anything grand , other than a couple of people who comment and say you know , I like your content , thank you , I didn't know this was a thing .

Speaker 3 39:46

Yeah , I kind of want to bring up the and I keep talking about her . I hope she doesn't mind , but conversation had with Alexis that everyone knows , earlier today and she framed it up in a really interesting way . She said think about it from the perspective of kids that are coming out of high school and into college and out of college around like 2015-ish , you have a device or multiple devices and the connection to the network has become so easy In many aspects to end users . Networking has just become a utility , like gas , like water , like electric . It's just there .

Speaker 3 40:25

And when you think about some of those utilities , do you think about how they work or do you even care ? No , as long as it's there , it's fine . And the kind of the scary thing about that is , yes , connecting to the networks become a lot easier , but there's still work there . There's still people that need to understand certain aspects of it . So that's why I think it's really cool that there's

Future of Networking in Technology

Speaker 3 40:47

people out there like Alexis , like you , that are Kevin , that are teaching people that , yes , this is another thing out there , because it seems like a lot of people will come out and they'll see , and I'm not dogging any of these technologies , I'm just saying that people will see the new hotness of cloud in AI and data engineering , data analysis and all that that might be interested by network engineering , but they don't necessarily , like you said , know that it's there .

Speaker 1 41:18

So I think what you're doing is important . Yeah , absolutely and that . But I just want to clarify my question was not a critique or an attack or anything like that , just trying to suss out what it's . Suss out your mission .

Speaker 4 41:31

You can't offend me , don't worry about that .

Speaker 1 41:34

I'm in .

Speaker 4 41:35

IT . You can't offend me .

Speaker 1 41:39

It's fine . You know this brings up a really great point that I hadn't considered . But when I got into network engineering , as I'm sure all of us did , the internet was still a relatively new thing and you know I was focused on bringing connectivity into my own home when I learned about networking and how to run cat five cable and crimping the ends and terminating and all that stuff . Today , like our kids , just have that connectivity . It's just there . It's that utility that Tim was talking about .

Speaker 2 42:06

I don't know if it's a fair parallel , aj . But when Tim was talking about , you know , the internet becoming a utility and nobody thinks about it and it's not sexy , like , it reminded me of the trades , right , like , yeah , I think that there's a big vacuum in the trades where people didn't want to be plumbers or carpenters or electricians , so they're . You know , I've heard people like Yvonne and stuff talk about that . Like you know , in construction there just aren't enough trades , people , right , and I don't know if what drove that is it's not sexy or people don't want to bust their ass or and it might have got Too many years of people telling kids you need a degree if you want to be successful .

Speaker 2 42:39

Well , that's what happened to me , right ? They said , like you got to go to college , right , and I'd probably have you know three shore houses by now if I was like a plumber or an electrician back then . So , yeah , it's , and I don't know how we make it cool again because it is a utility . Nobody thinks of it . It's unsexy like plumbing . And you know if you could go into cloud or dev or you know AI and on top of that , and then I'll get off my soapbox , like I feel like because it's been commoditized , it's a utility .

Speaker 2 43:11

Every huge organization wants to get rid of as many of its networking people as they can . Give me the automation solution that I can have two people run this instead of 20 . Give me the you know the software suite , or oh , ai might like . Now AI is the new threat , right , like . So I see something happening in business that I perceive it as they're trying to get rid of as many humans network engineers as they can , because humans are expensive and software is cheaper , and it concerns me so as much as I want to make network engineering sexy again or fun again or , you know , cool again , I don't know if this probably isn't the form or the show and now Kev , it's like great thanks for ruining my show , andy .

Speaker 2 43:53

But like I don't know if I would tell my kids to go into networking right in like 10 , 15 years , just because of all the changes I've seen in the 15 years I've been in . Like we went from , yes , you need the network , everybody needs the network , it's very important to like well , I mean , they can lay off half the industry and everything's still working . And we got cloud and AI , like it'll be fine , right . So I just I'm concerned about where the industry is and how everything's kind of going right , like I'm off my soapbox , it's the it's , it's the as a service mentality .

Speaker 3 44:22

I mean , when they first started touting network as a service , I'm like what are you talking about ? How do you , how do you deliver that ? There's still the network engineers that need to be there . But it's like you said , andy , they're it's trying to go to that abstraction model and I think that to an extent , the abstraction methodology makes a lot of sense . I , like we just talked about I was a network engineer in healthcare and there are different abstraction technologies that you don't need to fully understand the , the underlay and how you know VXLand , lisp , all of that's working . It's there to help you do your network engineering job more quickly , more efficiently .

Speaker 3 45:07

Yes , you still need somebody with network knowledge to know where to go to make these changes , but it abstracts a lot of the under the hood stuff . So I think that stuff's really important and I'm glad that it's there . But at least where we're at in the industry today , you still need people to know where to go , where to click , what needs to be configured . So the understanding you know layers one through seven are still relevant , in my opinion . Now , cloud has obviously changed a lot of things and networking in the cloud is still there , listen to cables , clouds , it's . It's just different , right ? So , andy , I think that's that's a really interesting point and it's went back to the conversation that we had with Alexis this morning is what does it look like 15 years from now ? We don't know what's going to look like a year and a half from now .

Speaker 2 45:58

And all those abstractions are software , which is why everybody's going into dev . I mean it's all software , but then you're going to have a bunch of devs who don't understand basic networking and well , that's the same today .

Speaker 4 46:11

Well , no , and that's that's a problem , right , that's .

Speaker 4 46:14

I feel like we've all dealt with those people in workplaces who are server admins or application developers or whatever and they have no idea how the network actually works .

Speaker 4 46:22

And those people are very hard to talk to sometimes because they they they know enough that their stuff's supposed to be working but not the you know are part of it . So it's , it's frustrating , and I think my counterpoint to the fact that we may be no longer needed in the in the future is that even if you start the path of networking now and you end up a network engineer in five , six years and then automation starts going off and all that stuff , you can pivot and having that foundation of networking will serve you in any other IT field . Whether you go into security or automation or programming or whatever , you will have that foundation of networking and that will make you valuable , especially in our climate where people aren't flocking to networking and just making more valuable to your team and being yes to me and all that kind of stuff . I don't think it'll hurt you at all . That's what I'm saying . I don't think it's a bad thing .

Speaker 3 47:12

A thousand percent , a thousand percent .

Speaker 3 47:15

Yes , what I've found with network engineers and network engineering is that you become a very versatile person as far as skill sets , because , think about it , when I was a network engineer , you would get pulled into basically any project , because people may not know if there would be a networking component , if we need networking , and they'd rather just get you in sooner than later , just in case .

Speaker 3 47:43

So you , as a network engineer , are learning about the business , you're learning about the different applications , your understanding , at least at a high level , how things like virtualization work . And if you think , conversely , other disciplines aren't necessarily doing that with other disciplines , including networking , so you may have application support people , application developers , sys admins that don't necessarily need to learn networking because they're not always pulled into those different things . But as a network engineer , more often than not , projects , incidents , problems you're getting pulled in , so you learn all those different things . So , to your point , if you have to get to , or not even have to , if you want to pivot into something else , I think being a virtual network engineer , it's , it's , at the end of the day , easier for you to do that , or be able to do that for sure .

Speaker 2 48:34

I don't know which cognitive distortion or whatever that I forget what the stuff we used to talk about with this .

Speaker 2 48:40

I'm heavily distorted , brother well , like that , all like the way you view the world . So you know , I I'm just double checking . I'm gonna refute myself and agree with Kevin , because when we were talking to Doug Midori , there's five billion people connected to the Internet . There's eight billion people on the planet , so there's three billion with a B people that aren't even connected to the Internet yet . So I can stand here and say from my career in the past ten years and what I've seen in the industry and vendors , networking is going away , yet there are three billion people that aren't even connected yet . So maybe networking isn't , as you know , threatened , as I think it is in my experience , because there's plenty of network to still build , just just infrastructure , just plant right to get to people . I just , I like to argue with myself on the show , apparently .

Speaker 1 49:27

I agree multiple layers of Andy awesome , kevin you so , if I , if I recall correctly , you decided to start putting out your own videos because you didn't find any content creators doing what you were doing .

Speaker 4 49:44

Correct . Yeah , I wouldn't bring awareness .

Speaker 1 49:47

Yeah , I think that that's great . I mean , I've been on a lot of social media platforms and I've never really sat there and been like I , I want Short form videos . We're on to talk now and we only post like clips of stuff that we've done on our shows . Like I sometimes feel like I have an idea . I've posted like a couple of things , but the content that you come up with is great . It's , it's really good stuff . And then you know , I look at your content and then I was like , oh man , we should do that . I don't want to do that because he's doing such a great job at it .

Speaker 2 50:16

Well , that's . That's why I'm such a big fan of Kevin's . Exactly it's so hard to be concise . I mean we do an hour long form show , right , like we talk for an hour . We've done it 145 episodes where I see like I'll hop on Kevin , you'll have that minute thing and I'm like , damn , how did he so eloquently and brilliantly ? The guy explained a frickin V-Lan and like 60 seconds like how did he do that ?

Speaker 4 50:41

Because it takes me these guys know I'm verbose dude .

Speaker 2 50:44

It takes me three minutes just to get my thoughts together editing , man editing .

Speaker 3 50:52

In the snow . Five miles .

Speaker 2 50:53

Both You're really you're really good at it , man , like it's , it's . We kind of got forced into it . We had . We got approached by a sponsor wanted to do short firm or like sure , like well , you know , we'll try and figure that out and it and it's gone well . We've gotten a lot of Positive feedback on it but it's , I'm still struggling cracking that . You know , short firm , one to three minute kind of thing , it's hard I can't see .

Speaker 4 51:16

Yeah , you want to . It's hard because I'm also trying to educate people like people ask me questions like what is a V-Lan , that kind of stuff . And it's hard because I want the network engineer me , who's a geeking out on this , wants to , you know , make a 30 minute video .

Speaker 2 51:30

But I can't .

Speaker 4 51:33

People , people just won't stick around for it . You know they , if you look at the , the graphs it does the data of how long the person's watched you and after a minute , like it drops pretty fast . So I was like , okay , well , I'll make a little one minute things keep your attention and maybe get you enough information where it peaks your interest for more . I don't want to try to copy like David Bombos he's out of a popular YouTube and all these people who have long form content . I don't want to Copy that because that's not the same market .

Speaker 4 52:00

I feel like once you're at that point where you're gonna watch an hour long video , you're already invested , you're already interested in it , you're already going that bad that path . But so my target audience are people who Are just now in like getting into it or just now figuring out it exists . So I think that very concise try to get it as much information that's not too technical but enough to get the correct curiosity is is what my aim is . I don't know how successful I am at it all the time , but that's my , that's my goal , that's my aim for it .

Speaker 2 52:30

What's your , what's your labbing been like ? Have you labbed over the years with studying and have a lab ? Did you cloud ?

Speaker 4 52:35

yeah , so how ?

Speaker 2 52:36

do you have a ?

Speaker 4 52:37

When I said the ISP , I had to do a lab just because that world , you know , if you're studying for your CCNA and learning enterprise stuff , the ISP world is completely different . So I had to create a lab for that and you know , I think I got it off eBay for like 200 bucks at the time some really old hard .

Speaker 4 52:54

Which is yeah , yeah , cisco switches and Because I , especially at the time of the ISP , I had no physical like anything . I was at a console , so like I wanted something physical . I wanted that to be able to plug stuff in and do that . But yeah , so now if I'm labbing anything out , it's it's all virtual . I use packet tracer for a lot . If I'm

Value of Physical Labs in Networking

Speaker 4 53:17

doing CCNP stuff , I'll do the CML . But yeah , it's it's a lot of the stuff . Because I've now done a lot of it , I don't need to lab it as much I had . It's more like refreshing and getting deeper into the , the technical details , and it's not so much the configuration or making it work anymore . So yeah , I haven't done a ton of labbing as of late , but I have a lab . I just bought more equipment actually more firewalls , some ASAs and stuff because I'm doing the CCNP security as I go okay .

Speaker 2 53:48

What would you tell your tiki talk whippersnappers that you know want to get in to the industry and and that was for you to you know , would you ? Would you would just say that there's value in learning the physical ? Or would you just say , hey , man , you know , spin it up and CML , don't go through all the pain of I'm a physical lab guy , so I'm . That's why I'm asking .

Speaker 4 54:09

Yeah . So I would say that number one most important thing is to do what you can . You know if , if you're an high school kid and you don't have access to physical equipment , then free packet tracers , fine . Do what you can first , but if you do have the means , physical is always better just because you learn so much more of the intricacies then on a simulator or an emulator , just do with stuff like oh , the boot loader is under , is the wrong . I got shipped , the boot loader was wrong and now how do I fix that ? You won't get that in a , you know , in a lab and package racer , little stuff like that is stuff that will translate very well to your first job as a network admin . Where it's . It's that kind of stuff that you won't learn a book that is going to be valuable for your team and trying to figure stuff out . So , yeah , always physical if you can .

Speaker 2 54:56

Yeah , I think it's a huge differentiator when you're new and trying to break in . I used my , I started a blog to document my labbing and it's something that you know my first job in prod that's what the guy said . He's like I , your passion and your labbing and you're , and you know like . I looked at your blog like wow , I could see how much work you put into it , as opposed to like , hey , I'm this guy and I applied to have a CCNA , like it . Just he said it was a differentiator .

Speaker 3 55:20

Yeah , yeah , that's right , never , never , overlooked the physical layer . I mean , andy , you've brought that up before when you were in that way and roll , when you had to work with remote hands in a data center somewhere , where it helped you to be able to walk people through , because you've you had that physical experience . You weren't on site that you had to walk somebody through it and that was that was helpful , that you were Learned up on it .

Speaker 2 55:45

I spent six years being supported by remote hands and having years with my hands on gear and cables , and all that , just I was able . I felt like I would actually close my eyes on the bridge with them , talking to them and I would try to see , because they're describing to me what's happening . And I felt like , because I had that experience , I could , I could relate , you know , and I forget what they used to say in the CCNA like 60 to 70% of network issues are the physical layer , right . So For troubleshooting , for figuring stuff out , for for trying to get in the head of somebody with remote , I mean , I just don't think you can go wrong with physical . But a good point have like packet tracer is great . I started on packet tracer . It's wonderful and you can get it real far , you know real far with that . It's free .

Speaker 4 56:24

Yeah , that's . You know , that's part of the reason why I left the ISP is because it was all virtual and I would get calls from head ends and you know I'd have them replace a card in a CMTS or something and they , okay , what does it look like ? I'd be like , uh , one second , put them on mute and start googling the model number so that I could figure out like , okay , it's a , it's a you know gray box and it has like five slots in it . Okay , okay , okay , well , it's slot , oh , one second .

Speaker 4 56:49

So it was like I was googling these stuff to try to tell these guys what to do and it just seemed ridiculous to me Like I seem like this was not productive and helpful to them or me at that point . Um , so that's where I was like I need to get more physical , understand , you know , actual , you know get my hands on enterprise level stuff . And it's helped me immensely that that going backwards from engineer to admin has probably helped me more in my career than anything else . I learned more doing that for those four years of being an admin that I had learned in that two years of being an engineer .

Speaker 2 57:20

Are you using any automation ? I don't think we touched on that , do you ?

Speaker 4 57:22

guys have made anything ? No , not really .

Speaker 2 57:25

Good . Keep up the good fight .

Speaker 4 57:27

I'm trying to stay away as much as I can . Don't let him make you learn Python .

Speaker 2 57:30

We can do this , man , it's all dirty .

Speaker 4 57:33

I bought the book uh , I think it's Python for networkers or something like Python networking , something like that . Um , and I have yet to open it . It's one of those like sitting on my desk or staring at me and I'm like one day I'll have to open you , but not yet , Not today , Not doing it and I'm half joking .

Speaker 2 57:48

I see the value in it , but I just can't stand coding and you know it's not for me .

Speaker 1 57:54

and I'd be a better network engineer ?

Speaker 2 57:56

if I did , probably , but I just I can't stand it .

Speaker 4 57:59

Right , I don't know . We my , uh , when I worked at the university , we have a team of like five engineers , um , and we had our boss was kind of the programmer of the group and he passed away and so we were left with all these tools that we had no idea how to support , and it was easier for us to hire a programmer and teach them networking than it was to take these five program or five networkers and make them programmers . So it's , it's . It seems like a theme where you either just love programming or you don't , and a lot of the network people that I know are in networking because they don't like programming .

Speaker 2 58:34

Yes , thank you for saying it out loud . I mean , there are the computer science folks like AJ and Tim that , like can do you know programming , but I feel like the majority is like Whoa whoa , whoa whoa . Rich .

Speaker 3 58:47

AJ and Tim are you talking about ?

Speaker 1 58:50

Hang on , maybe AJ .

Speaker 2 58:52

Well , I will . I will . I will say that I do love me some Ansible . Aj has walked me through Ansible a couple times . Has an incredible blog series on .

Speaker 2 59:00

On no Blinky Blinky that I think Ansible is very accessible for somebody like me . Slash us who's like code , get out of my face because it's it's . It's pretty and I'll be honest

Exploring IT Careers and Networking

Speaker 2 59:09

with you Now I'm going to sound like a sellout , but my old buddy , chris from my old job , he was showing me Terraform and it's not . I think it's easier than like programming and Python and stuff . So there there , there are some tools out there that aren't awful from a guy who can't stand coding . Ansible , I think , is number one and I think Terraform is right behind it . It's a really easy infrastructure as code , like if you can look at a Cisco CLI , you can look at a text file and build infrastructure with Terraform , you know , relatively easy .

Speaker 2 59:37

And we got friends in the what's his name ? William Collins , from like uh , alkira . He's putting out all kinds of like content on teaching Terraform and stuff . So yeah , but I'm with you , man . I'm glad to hear you're not automating . That makes me . That makes me happy . Where do you see yourself going in your career ? I mean , what do you ? What do you want to do ? Are you going to like , get a CCI and take over the world ? I mean , you got kids in a family .

Speaker 4 59:59

Yeah , no , I guess my , my priority is always going to be time with my kids , at least while they're still young . So I don't see myself ever getting CCI , at least until I'm that bored with my life that I can just do studying no offense to people who are doing this CCI right now and studying I just I don't have that much attention to do that right now . Um , so I really want to try to get more into security . Um , I , even though I've been doing firewalls now for a little while , I want to get deeper into that and to the security engineering part of it and possibly pivot into more of like a security , like solely security focused role . But honestly , I don't know .

Speaker 4 1:00:35

It's one of those things where I feel like I'm in a good position , where I've had , you know , 12 years , 10 , 10 , 10 to 12 years experience I can't do math , probably why I can't be a programmer Uh , 10 to 12 years of experience , and so I feel like I can go anywhere now , um , I can kind of , now that I have this base of networking , I can pretty much pivot and do anything I want . So I'm enjoying my new role right now in the firewall and see what that takes me .

Speaker 2 1:00:58

You know it's cool being a known entity , which you are now because of your content you've created , Because I've been interviewing for the past two months . It helps , Like I've had people tell me it's the strength of mine , like beyond everything else , and you're known , like to have the name . I mean not that it's why people hire known people , but it's a differentiator in the market , right ?

Speaker 4 1:01:20

Yes , it makes you stand out .

Speaker 2 1:01:21

Five engineers in front of you and yeah like , oh , you're the adjacent node guy , like , cool , like it was between you and the other guy , but we like you . Yeah , you take time Like come on over , you know . And I'm not saying that's why you would get a job , but it's just one other differentiator , right ?

Speaker 4 1:01:34

Yeah , no , for sure , it is a little weird still , like I'll have . Like when I got my current job , I guess they googled me like anyone would , and they found my profile and on TikTok and everything , so like they didn't mention it in the interview . But the day after or the first day of the job , my boss was like , oh , by the way , I like your videos and they're really funny , and it was like it was unnerving . I was like , oh , it's not a secret . The internet is kind of this like , even though it's so large and so public , it's also can feel very like private and where you have only this , this mass people who are looking at you , no one you actually know , no one personally knows you .

Speaker 4 1:02:11

And in the last few months it's kind of been more personal , public , I guess I want to say of worth , friends and family and all the people know me and co workers . I get a , I get a random teams message asking for help on something and they're like oh , by the way , I like your videos . And that's still weird to me . It's still super weird , I don't know . But yes , it is definitely a good thing . I've gotten job offers and DMs . People have been giving me opportunities like hey , I have all this gear and if you want to make a lab , some videos on a lab , here's a bunch of free gear If you want it , that kind of stuff . So it's been overall good . That's why I would say advocate . If you're new in your IT career , definitely make content , make TikToks or a blog or whatever . It gives you exposure and it really helps , I think , for yourself learning the content and also just getting your name out there and , you know , being public about it .

Speaker 2 1:03:00

And share your quote . Unquote soft skills right your communication ability . There's nothing worse than a great engineer who cannot talk to humans . We've all met them . I mean , they're out there , but yeah , yeah especially in IT .

Speaker 1 1:03:13

Yeah , I just want to echo what you said , kevin . I mean , if you're a content creator and you're putting your content into , like what you know one to three minute short form videos you're articulating a point , you're taking a technical idea , thought process and you're compacting it into something that you know . You want your audience people who aren't typically exposed to technical things like this and you're trying to put it into terms that they can understand and welcome them into the process . So it shows that you're a clear communicator , you can articulate , you know technical competencies into for non technical people and that's a huge skill in and of itself . So putting that out there will certainly help you throughout your career .

Speaker 4 1:03:59

Well , I'm glad I came across that way .

Speaker 1 1:04:05

Kevin , this has been such a fun conversation . I hate that we have to wrap it up . Before we go , though , I want to ask you is there anything that we should have asked you , or is anything that you want to talk about before we wrap this up ?

Speaker 4 1:04:17

I don't think so . I go into networking . It's a cool field . Don't be afraid of it . Don't be afraid of getting , you know , getting obsolete by AI or whatever . It is definitely a good field to go into . We'll put in , scare anyone away and yeah , that's pretty much it . I had a lot of fun . Thank you guys for having me on here .

Speaker 1 1:04:39

Absolutely . We are huge fans of mental health here . On the art of network engineering , kevin , what do you do outside of work to help keep yourself balanced ?

Speaker 4 1:04:48

If I don't go to the gym at least , you know , five days a week , I end up , you know , wanting to kill someone . That sounds drastic , but like it's such a stress relief . I am a gym person , even if I just go there and walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes . It's something away from the house , especially if you work from home . Getting out and having a gym alone time is super helpful .

Speaker 1 1:05:13

Absolutely . Where can people find you ? For those in our audience that may not yet be exposed to you , on TikTok or other social media places ?

Speaker 4 1:05:22

I am adjacent node . One word all at every social media . I think I have an account everywhere . I'm mostly on TikTok and Twitter , but or ex Twex .

Speaker 1 1:05:34

I don't know what are people ?

Speaker 4 1:05:35

calling it now Twex . I like .

Speaker 3 1:05:38

Twex , I like that . I'm going to use that .

Speaker 1 1:05:43

Very good , all right , awesome , kevin . Thank you so much for giving us your time tonight . This has been such a fun chat . We will put links to all of Kevin's social media in our show notes . Kevin , I saw you had a blog adjacent , nodecom . Is that still active , I think ?

Speaker 4 1:06:00

there's like one or two posts total . I did that as I was looking for a job . I was like , okay , I'll , with my TikToks , I'll also do some blogging . But it's kind of gone to the wayside , as my TikTok has taken most of my time Just between recording , answering questions and editing . It's all I can do . Now my blog has kind of fallen to the wayside .

Speaker 1 1:06:22

I think blogs in general have . I haven't touched my blog in a very long time I got to make some choices . Am I going to do a YouTube channel , tiktok , or go back to my blog ? I'm not sure .

Speaker 4 1:06:32

Why both ?

Speaker 1 1:06:32

TikTok , I'm biased . Awesome , All right . Thanks again , Kevin . I'm sure we'll have you back in the future . This is like I said it's been a great cover and we'll see you all next time on another episode of the Arts of Network Engineering Podcast .

Speaker 2 1:06:48

Hey everyone , this is Andy . If you like what you heard today , then please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher . Click that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes . Also follow us on Twitter and Instagram . We are at Art of NetEng , that's Art of N-E-T-E-N-G . You can also find us on the web at ArtOfNetworkEngineeringcom , where we post all of our show notes , blog articles and general networking nerdery . You can also see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering . Thanks for listening .