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 feeling good to be back in the hot seat we we recorded an episode last week unfortunately due to some technical difficulties once again uh we will not be able to release it we'll just have to re-record it but i digress uh fresh in seattle lexi how are you i'm chilly just off the moving truck yeah i just jumped off like three days ago barely unpacked just managed to get sort of a setup going on here so i'm happy to be back it would have been funny if you had stacked all of your moving boxes behind your chair like you had just get all that moving sympathy milk that cow for a while yeah those assholes are making you record a podcast after you just unpacked look the move the move you haven't even unpacked yet the move was totally real and not a lie but it's been a great like way to be like sorry i can't i'm not the next like what's the first thing you unpacked it was your computer wasn't it um oh yeah there are both of but my partner and i we were both like all right first things first desks pcs go so so this this my office is like the first thing that came to fruition for me then the bed you know so nice nice mr laptop in the house andy how are you good evening mr murray well and you sir lumberjack andy how much longer is the beard hanging out you're looking pretty uh i might jump through the camera if you keep it up making me blush uh well i'm going to the mountains next week with my dad so i can't get rid of it then okay gotcha i gotta yeah i gotta anyway kind of looked apart i'm i'm good man um job is intense but good learning a lot both kids are home this week with kovid so that's been fun oh boy everybody's fine but you know good good as it was in march of 2020 when everything shut down in pa the kids are home we're busy at work and my eyes twitching get out of my office kid go watch tv but no i have the full support of it it's really nice that what's different here is they're like you know take care of your family do what you got to do like we understand you can't make calls and stuff so that that that's different than you know a year and a half ago so anyway life is good crazy the usual but i'm happy to be here well we're glad you're here we're glad the family is safe and soon to be healthy again i had i myself had a boomerang trip down to new jersey on monday i went down in the morning and back in the evening that was interesting and fun yeah yeah i showed up to do a staging aci uh project and unfortunately the customer was misinformed by one of their subcontractors and they were not ready for me to stage it so i had no need to stay there so was there like no cabling there like what what like you just couldn't do what you had to do the gear wasn't there can you not even say well the gear the gear was there um unfortunately because of all the lead times and stuff going on they had to borrow some gear to get this you know going uh but some of the gear was very badly damaged um like to the point where i'm not sure if you're we're going to be able to put sfps in the front uh and one of them was a nexus 9k and it wouldn't boot properly because it couldn't detect the fans and it would just uh you know after it's trying to boot it would shut down and say nope nope no fans can't do this so the ball back of the truck i have no idea it was it lived a very rough life i mean it's like like if you're walking through like a downtown part of some big city where you are and you look down an alley it looked like one of those people but you know that kind of just switch has just had a very very rough paper out huh it did it did it did but i i digress so happy to be home uh i i thought i was going to be in secaucus new jersey tonight and missed this recording so i'm very happy well keep it keep in mind keep in mind in not too long a time you and i will be seat buddies on a plane oh i know i can't wait no i can't we've never met now we're gonna sit on a plane for hours i hope we like each other be awkward wait are we all next to each other on the plane where are you going to be yeah yeah so so we're hanging next to each other we were we were booking flights to go to asheville that's going to happen here you're on the same plate but and he's just like my plane gets into asheville at 11 30. i'm like dude so does mine like what flight are you on like oh my god we're on the same flight yeah what c do you want he's like 12 i'm like oh my god 12 is open hold on i'm so excited yeah that's pretty much exactly how that conversation we might we might hold hands i don't know i'm really excited maybe maybe take lots of selfies oh we will we will get it while i'm on my like three-stop plane ride because apparently see nothing goes like one you know one way to or zero stops to asheville from seattle no unfortunately not sad no i'm from seattle anyway well let's uh let's get into some wins and get this episode started andy can you give me a goat screen all right winning in our discord channel this week is zen et i probably screwed that up but congratulations for passing your enterprise wireless design exam and completing your ccnp enterprise robin canelo passed the ccsp the certified cloud security practitioner from isc squared i believe uh hubus tank pilgrim passed the osep and then uh cisco boy 906 started their first position as a network engineer intern congratulations jordan is now a technical advocate for ns1 representing netbox that's yeah that's awesome congratulations jordan congrats jordan uh freeman ed tech passed the aruba certified mobility associate congratulations new patreons join us joining us this week is michael levi and sparag thank you so much for supporting us here at the art of network engineering podcast if you're interested in joining our patreon program and joining us while we live stream and record these episodes you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of netenge check out our different options join away and hopefully we'll see you here in the chat now i am very excited to welcome back to the show this week tim mcconaughey and brittany mussett thank you so much for joining us i think this is the first time we've had two guests on at the same time i believe so i believe so what better two guests to have back i agreed even though we've had you guys back on the show can we do some quick introductions for anybody who oh yeah because it's been a while since you've both been on so brittany brittany can you please introduce yourself for our guests yes so um i'm brittany i'm in houston texas and i've been a technical recruiter for almost five years now i've placed about i think 175 people in in tech jobs over the time and have unfortunately had some failures i've seen many feedback come from interview processes negotiations and everything around tech excellent and i think it's important to know that you a lot of the people that you have placed are not just in tech in general in network engineering correct yeah network engineering cisco predominantly some juniper there indeed um then we've also anything all infrastructure systems cyber security so heavy on your hardware very cool very cool well thank you again for joining us uh tim mcconaughey i'm so glad to be talking to you again because you have recently started a new position so i'd love to hear how you're doing and how the new job is going uh yeah so tim mcconaughey um i now work at avatrix which is a cloud native secure cloud networking uh company um so within the last what week and a half so yeah i started about a week and a half ago uh it's going pretty well i went to dallas for our sales kickoff so like on monday i started and they were just like can you be in dallas by wednesday so i i booked a flight to tell us welcome aboard and uh i just got back yeah thanks right exactly uh and i got you know i came back on friday so um this week i've been hammering out the labs they give us a huge cloud lab all the cloud providers i've got an account with all the cloud providers i'm just it's awesome i'm loving it so far tim let me give you a tip don't leave the labs running in the cloud it's expensive oh no no no turn them off yeah it's been it's been good it's been good thanks awesome awesome all right so let's i agree with andy why don't we start with you you get hit up on uh linkedin or you know wherever by a recruiter they think you're a good match for a position now let's let's talk salaries the position even within the range where you want to be is it going to be worth your time to go through this process um where do we begin there before i go off i would say usually before i go off on a rant on why that makes me nuts maybe it's good to hear from a professional recruiter on maybe what's behind that question why why it so it's it's a sales type position right so why is a recruiter qualifying the candidate in in the first communication is is i guess what my question would be right yeah and honestly the response varies between if it is an internal recruiter someone that is you know just strictly hr and doesn't say that they're placing your people all the time for network engineers like like my profile clearly says on linkedin you know you would you would approach me much differently than you would internal someone at a big company and that's due to you know even burning bridges or you know things that some people may or may not be able to say um one huge thing to note too with external recruiters versus internal is that external recruiters i could represent you know 15 different clients that all have different jobs that you could be good for and i could have you 15 interviews at a time so you know that's that's going to be a lot different than someone at just xyz company they're only ever going to have positions for you at that company right so you want to be a little bit more careful about that you know like when i'm speaking with when i reach out to people and if someone says hey i don't want to work for that company i like okay who do you want to work for and then we can you know talk a little bit more about like what are you looking for on the money and negotiate around there so your response to an external recruiter can be different and that can go elsewhere now with internal recruiters i would say you don't want to necessarily be blunt like i need this right away right because you do kind of want to keep some doors open um so i mean how would i guess we can go around what bothers you the most is it the external recruiters reaching out to you for relevant jobs and they're not not even right or yes how do you respond to internet yeah i think that's fair right that's my biggest complaint just the the flood of i made the mistake of like i don't know last year at some point of like putting my resume on one of those sites that's you know i'm looking i a job search site and i regret it so badly because even after deleting like everything off of it i i finally deleted my account you know finally i should have done a lot earlier but like i was getting flooded with just bullshit just jobs that had nothing to do with me basically are just like tangentially related to what i've done yeah that's enough but that's my fault um it is annoying i mean i've gotten reached out for recruiters asking me to be a network engineer you know it's it's insane and i'll go and ask you know who's your client so i can try to go find out about the role and actually find the talent you know but it's it's just it's just people at the end of the day it comes down to that and i would get i get so annoyed like i i call cold call people all the time if i lexi if i saw your resume on whatever not monster last year and i saw your number i called yeah not monster.com i would have called you you know because i'd be like she looks great for this job hopefully even thought same relevant right um and that's coming from me who doesn't answer random numbers hates spam calls and you know that's what i do and i'm expecting you to answer um so i went off top topic there i don't know what my point was hang on because i do want to make a just a quick comment on that brittany because you you said that like you'd see somebody's resume and i assume you would actually read it at least a little bit to make sure it's relevant right okay so yeah some recruiters obviously don't do that i know you do but like yeah that's annoying but um the fact that you would i assume you'd call and then i would screen the call because i screen every single call that i ever get um and you'd leave a voicemail right like hey this is so and this is britney from such and such company and you know we have a client it looks like you'd be a good fit for this position let me know if you're interested is that kind of like how it goes i assume yeah in a way i'll leave a voicemail people hardly ever do that and then um i'll follow up with the email and then a linkedin message and you know what has even changed over when i first started i would never give people rates right away because we're seeing it now what are we in the great resignation right now that we keep seeing on linkedin every day um people tech talent you are the hottest thing in the world right now i think i saw like one percent is unemployed that's it so now like it's you guys i need you to give me the time of the day so i would never put my rates or my salaries on the initial email or whatsoever i've also gotten confident in the fact that i do read resumes and know who i'm reaching out to are relevant so i will you know i will write like now the past year i put the salary i put the budget i put the rate that i have in the email and my response rate it goes up you know so much yeah yeah and it's just because you want to see that info one you know it's not a waste of time my my emails are not fluff it's not it's not hey you're impressive it's hey i saw your resume i say where i got your contact info got this job title because you'll know senior whatever admin whatever it is um rate location salary and it's yay or a from there right like people can say is this a waste i have a question um and we'll probably get to leaving money on the table a little later but my understanding and i don't know if somebody told me this or if i read it but are there certain recruiters i mean i'm guessing they're external and i don't know if it's a per company basis but would they get the difference between the max rate and what the client accepts meaning that the i've always wondered what's behind that question how much do you want to make so early on because let's say the the company that comes to you and says i need talent and they say my max budget is 50 an hour and then it would be if i'm wondering if recruit like i i don't expect you to tell me this because it's none of my business but at the same time i don't know how recruiters are paid because if you can get the talent to come in at the lower than max rate that's on the contract or that the person looking for the town agreed to my understanding is they get the difference so if you get somebody coming at 40 an hour that recruiter gets 10 an hour for the length of that contract because they got the delta now i don't know if that's true i don't even know if i can even ask you that because i don't want to like besmirch your reputation in the community either you know no no you're good and honestly it is a case case or business by business um thing it just even in my company we'll have different i guess terms or whatever with clients or agreements like there's some you know is a tin company or a 10-man company who just needs a network engineer you know once every five years right we may have a higher um like terms for you pay us this percentage off of whatever their base salary is if we find the talent and a lot of times they'll even be like they need um they'll be terms to where they have to be in that role for three months or you know we pay you the money back or replacement guarantees um so it is external recruitment is a sales business like it essentially is but if you're paid on commission meaning a percentage of my pay then it would behoove you to get me a higher rate but if you're paid the difference between the you know what i'm saying like and and for the engineer who's on the other side of the table you don't know and maybe it's because i'm cynical and maybe it's because i used to sell used cars and i know how things can be but i you know and it is it's good to be cynical like that and you'll probably know from selling used cars the people that cut those or make those big margins or you know are constantly cheating people out they don't last they're not the best it's you know they don't always have the best clients or even the best stock right like they're you know it's just the cream will always rise to the top and it's let me ask it differently have you ever heard of a recruiter getting paid more to bring in somebody at a lower rate than oh yeah okay absolutely that's how i should have been even contracts contract work work i would say more i've heard horror stories of people you know having a bill rate of like 200 an hour and then the person doing the work is only getting paid like what 70 65 an hour which is still great but it's like who why is someone else getting oh i mean and to me that's the whole crux of this conversation is when you negotiate your salary you only get one shot at it and depending on how much time you're at that job you're stuck there because once you're in a company i've never seen anybody get a big pay jump within a company i maybe it happens not without going okay yeah right like right maybe go to sales like oh now you got a nice salary structure or something but i can tell you a comcast when i was a cable guy who went to the knock it was an internal recruiter and she gave me a number and i was like oh my god that's amazing and then a week later he's like well i talked to hr we can't give you more than 10 more than you're making now like yeah the old right cat hr it's a thing right so you know it's so important i mean yeah we get skilled up and we get our certs and we get you know we try to figure out how to be valuable um in the market but man you really got to learn how to get the most because you only get one shot and i'll be honest with you my experience and maybe it's from my sales background but i've negotiated some really nice salaries now the downside of that is i think the higher salary you command my experience has been it's it's proportional to the stress that you're hit with when you go into that place like i don't know if the junior network people they're giving the amount of responsibility like if you get senior network engineering money no right i can answer that uh no uh no if you're coming in well okay let me just back up for a second but yeah when i was hired as a junior network engineer load you know in in a knock as my my first you know networking position um i the pay was amazing for me because i was working at like a i was not working at a livable wage prior to that okay but um realistically for for like you know somebody in a senior role um it was not it was nothing so um when i got hired on board for that position my responsibility increased over time but um i was like swapping out cables for a while before you know for like a year before i could get anything like real substantial but if you stayed there for 10 years and climbed yourself up to an architect i don't know if you'd get like a 40 bump you know what i mean like nope yeah your pay rate would not have been as high as if you'd come off the street right like you have to leave and that's unfortunate right like they say it's hard to find talent and then retain talent and i don't understand i know we're kind of going off topic a little bit and we can move that never happens here i'm sorry but like it frustrates me so much that companies for whatever reason will not invest in their own people uh as readily as they will outside talent i don't understand that like i was just talking to a former co-worker who is more than qualified for like a a senior management position and this person like they're they're making this person jump through hoops to just even get a recommendation for an interview like ridiculous hoops like you have to have people in like five other departments give you a letter of recommendations like okay but they don't even know what networking is so why you know like how are you companies are cheap and once you're in the door they they got you but if you're gonna hire someone on double triple quadruple the salary from outside your company i don't understand the benefit of that if you're going to pay someone that huge salary pay it to somebody who knows your systems and like processes and maybe you've already invested all that money in yeah you have to repay that time for cost on everything with training a new employee yeah exactly it's wow you know what's also interesting to me is where you are in your career journey i think has a lot to do with your level of confidence during the negotiation when i was trying to get my first network engineering job i would have taken anything because the hardest hill to climb was getting that first networking job that first network engineer title and that's true and i did right the the isp i was at they they they paid under market when i was in the field they paid under market when i was in the knock but i got that so and and i think that's tim we were talking earlier in our discord that's how this whole thing came up was i think it was a person starting out right like looking for their first job and hey i had a conversation and you know they asked me what i want to make and i have no idea because i remember being new and i remember being afraid to ask for too much because i don't want to i need the job right and i've been on i mean i had like two or three dozen phone interviews like phone screens that never went any further when i was a cable guy with my ccna right so oh my god the 37th call somebody's talking about money like i'll take anything get me that first job and i feel like a certain amount of recruiters can use that to their advantage and and know that and again not knowing how their payment structure is set up you know that that may it may be advanced you know advantageous to them but you know then the later in my journey i get i i kind of know how to so anyway i guess i guess what i'd like to say is when what what i do right i don't know if we're at that part yet but i just want to say it because i'm yapping is when someone asks me hey you're this perfect fit uh i think you'd be great here i love everything you're doing what are you looking to make say something to the effect of well i don't know enough about the job i haven't met the people i'll be working with i haven't met my manager i don't know the culture all i have is a job description which i know doesn't really tell the whole tale so i don't have enough information right now to give you that number i need to see the total benefits package how much paid time you know you can get in all that stuff what's the 401k match right so i tell them i don't have enough information right now in the first five minutes we've talked to give you my number but i know that you have a job wreck tied to a budget with a range so what's the range yeah here's the sales trick the next person who talks loses it's a trick as old as time but the next because if you're if you say that as the as the candidate and then their silence and then they don't say anything and then you just start talking you're gonna talk yourself out of money so it's it's a closing trick but you say what that's what i say it's worked every time you say what you say you call them out and say you have a wreck you have a budget you tell me and then you shut up and you do not talk the other person will start talking if they don't give you and here's what's happened to me twice in my career when the person started talking the numbers were out of this world i never would have asked ever for what they paid me in fintech i i didn't have that level of confidence and i didn't know the market demanded that rate but they started talking and i was like oh my god and i got like a 93 raise from the isp to fintech and then when i talked to a vendor the same thing happened they asked me the question i gave the answer i just told you they started talking and i blacked out momentarily but that's this is true and then when it came back to consciousness lie couldn't they just pick a number in the middle of the range and tell you that here's my point they could but if i answer the question how much are you looking to make i never in a million years would have asked for what they offered because i didn't think my skill set was worth it they know they know what the range is right they're withholding data from you and that is a tactic in negotiation right because there's a benefit to them right there's a benefit to withholding information how often is it that recruiters are just like no i'm not telling you because i've when people ask me i'm just like okay here like that's what it is like do you get into the like often i had one i i did that i did the thing andy i did the thing because i think we had talked about this i had one who was like at least to me it seemed very clearly like he was just sort of like thinking on his toes what is like something in the middle of the salary range i am like fairly confident that i was not yeah i'm not happy how that went down but we didn't get to really talk at length about it but well i didn't know but i i agree with you i agree with what you're saying it's it's fine but anyway i'm sorry i'm not trying to tear down your no no you're good and definitely worthwhile you know i but god it's tricky out there and and one thing to note too i've i've had clients who will tell me a range you know so let's just say 120 to 140. and i'll tell er candidates that and i'm not lying truth you know swear on anything the client told me that then they'll get an offer of 135 and candidates like brittany you said they said you know 120 to 140 was the range and i'm like they did tell me that you know and that's when we can go back to how do we negotiate around you know what they said the range was you know or you know maybe there's a sign-on bonus we can get in there too so it's sometimes it really comes down conversation sorry go ahead i think i'm lagging um it does come down to each individual person too which i'm sure like you can always tell like what your connection is you have the rapport they beat us and you are not like you you can kind of check if anybody hears if anybody hears anything i said in this episode never give your number and i'll stand by that never give your number tim you can take so the opposite view go ahead aj we no no not at all the opposite view andy i there's absolutely merit to what you say um what i what i would uh i never said generally the reason i don't 100 agree with that is because um you know you can just end up looking obtuse if you're just like putting your foot down stomping your foot and saying i will just never say so having said that right so if somebody says like what's your number my comeback is not like i'll i will not cement myself to a number what i'll say is you know that's gonna depend it's kind you kind of said it yourself right it's gonna depend on what the uh what the requirements are for the position what the team is like what uh the total compensation i say that a lot like i it really depends on what the total compensation is right what is the foreign call every third week you know right and what's my work-life balance gonna look like and so if you're asking if you absolutely will not move forward until i say some number i'll throw a number without you but i'll let you know that that number is you know almost worthless until we talk about total compensation so that's where i leave that one i wouldn't say never because there are i've run into recruiters that take it as a a as an insult not an insult but like they just they they they're like they they treat you like a child like you know you have to tell me something in the conversation matters because if you're new and you're desperate you're not going to have that confidence to go dude if you're going to play this game with me then there's nothing else we need to talk about because if you stand people up on bullshit yeah absolutely they'll usually be like uh you know my bad they generally should be trying to help you find a role as well if and i've one thing i thought of too andy when you mentioned like how do we get paid um for direct hire placements like so a full-time salaried role we don't get nothing comes out of the salaried person's pay right like you're not losing anything and it's it's always going to be the same percentage so from that perspective the recruiter is actually motivated to go get you a higher salary isn't it mostly contract to hire i feel like everything's contract to hire yeah i mean that's what i was going to say is where they can really get creative or sketchy is on the contract side um but that you'll be able to tell like you go with your gut for the main if this person seems slimy and they are you know or maybe it's a good job and you think it could go somewhere and you do get the job bring it to your favorite recruiter brittany and she can you know you just reminded me like you're so good at what you do right when i looked you up when you when you came when you came up on my radar you were involved in the community you were posting useful things i mean you were like posting articles on like how to negotiate salary like so you were creating value trying to help people and i was like oh wow because that's rare right and even the guy who placed me at fintech it was the same kind of thing he spent like an hour and a half on the phone with me our first conversation talking about like helping me figure out because it was a contract role and i'm like well i don't know what rate to ask for because i'm full time and i don't know how to and he did all that math for me so you know right you meet somebody you know you can either look at them online and see if they're contributing or just talking to them to know whether like you're saying they're a slimy salesperson or whether like you brittany who are like really want to help people want to provide value you want to you know i mean you're getting something have like well yeah sure like you're just a person and not a used car salesman right like it makes it makes a big difference so so it really does brittany i want to go back you had made a statement earlier about when um you know somebody got an offer like uh of like 135 you're like oh well i thought the range was 140 or whatever like it if you're given a range is should you expect the top end of the range when you get the offer and if you don't get the top end of the range like it's a range if you're getting in the middle is it because your skill set merits the middle of the range or are they always going to give you is the first offer you get always the highest offer you're going to get i suspect not because i think that when you get a job offer there's this expectation that you're going to negotiate yeah and um with the with the range i would say don't expect the high end of the range i mean that's just setting yourself up to be disappointed um in five thousand dollar let's say it is in the middle it's 5 000 in the range right that's really not much if there is you know a match on um on a 401k that you didn't get before it could be more than 5000 at the end of the year so i think before like getting hot-headed or anything like that it's you really do need to look at every little bitty thing like i've recently you guys probably know about this but i've learned about um like a flexible health account or something health reimbursement accounts yeah and i that's like money just sitting there also you know it's so there's other things to that you could look at that you know don't just expect the high end that makes sense yeah absolutely yeah you know what else is interesting well we talked about it right before the the show started the salary transparency right now nobody here is going to say what they make but here's my point i don't know what any of you make and it's really none of my business but how am i supposed to know what a person with one three five ten years and these certifications and like it's it's it's hard to know what the market rate you know should be if you're if you're a career changer like lex and i you know like you're broke at a crappy job and now you could be a little less broke like a better job knowing you know if your long game is like well i'll skill up and so it i i think because we don't talk we could talk about past salaries sure but like because we don't talk about salaries it's it's hard to get a gauge like i've i'm trying to think i guess i've looked at glassdoor i mean you could google like network engineer in philadelphia right and you'll get a bunch of different ranges but even that can be wide i mean it could be like 62 to 180 grand well what the hell do i do with that you know so it's i think it's just a cultural kind of uh challenge if we don't have any transparency with our salary i have no idea of knowing if i'm being overpaid underpaid paid fairly i'm just gonna i'm just gonna say i've i still have no idea what like a junior network engineer should expect to make i mean are you in a high-cost living area are you in a low-cost living area and also i still don't know regardless right yeah i know the salary that i made when i started out like with no not a ccna nothing no experience but by the end of that my tenure at that company my salary had changed quite a bit or quite a bit i don't know um so it's it's because we all have our own individual experiences i feel like maybe brittany might know more than all of us on this i don't know like about it because you see you know you placed how many how many different pieces yeah and i was thinking about it like i've i really do i i asked 20 people today how much they make and i got all that market um you know data today just what they're making what they want to make all that you know how they're how they're going to get there so it is it is interesting like how how taboo it can be for you guys to not talk about it and i i wish it would be more talked about like there's there's glass door you know it's it's anonymous but how anonymous is it really and then um i've there's some other websites i've i've been seeing there's one uh levels i don't know if you've seen that there's a few more that are really anonymous that are actually decent and there's another one called blind um and for big companies too um for big companies as well like there's just a lot of info you can even search by the job title right like network engineer and see all the reviews and like they it really looks anonymous more than glass door like you don't have to connect your facebook to get on glassdoor or anything you know um or the other ones but it's i do wish it could be talked about more maybe if there could be more anonymous maybe if you guys could make one on your discord just to wear like it's just an anonymous excel sheet people could put their level and like their salary with an idea yeah you know just like a group a way to anonymous salary right because i i think i mentioned the earlier a guy i was talking to in the community shared with me all the salaries had for every tech job and that was his reasoning was he wanted to provide transparency his his reasoning was to help underrepresented folks have a baseline like well this is what i made so if you're making half of that doing the same job that's a problem right so i thought that was cool yeah and you could you could break it down even like male or female where do you live you know like anything um to to do that but um i find that a lot of contractors or people that do consulting they're pretty open to talking about what they make as well so it may be you know if if you as an individual know someone that contracts in your skill set like ask them hey what rates are you getting hit up for for contracts like that's a really good way to to manage the the what the market value is and um that's something like say i literally was going through my head as you were mentioning like the entry-level networking i i think for entry level like ccna or csen level comp tia roles i see the biggest discrepancy on rates and salaries um than any anything and i don't know what it is it's even if it's like a data center technician or a knock engine or a knock technician i have two clients right now um both have those roles and one's offering well the um 100k there'd be a disparity i think between knock technician and data center tech but then you read the job descriptions and when i speak to them they want the example did you say 100k as far as like i made 62k i made 62k at a knock now i was happy because it was like 9 grand more than i made in the field but holy crap 100k at a knock is awesome was it a junior position though right when they have to compete there's a much more competition yeah right now you know there was and so similar roles i've it was a contract to hire in dallas um i placed someone that came from like a 35 000 salary um to 40 an hour doesn't that make you feel good ching ching now what kind of role was that was that was that the 90 that's 80 000 a knock yeah data he was in the uh knock every day in dallas and he was paying he was being paid 35 grand and you got 40 an hour to work at the knock right he doubled us you know over double the salary yes yeah he did i mean there's always risk to making the contract leap which i i love contract fortune fortune favors the bold okay i i had i'm gonna i've said this probably before but when i i weighed 62 grand at the knock and that and i was at that company for like seven or eight years whatever it was and then i got a 50 an hour contract leaving it was a year contract i made 108 000 the first year i was there and that was life-changing money i i was actually building networks i was able to put my son in a better daycare he was sick but but it was scary i mean every every career change i've had was was wrought with risk because we just bought a house we just got married we had a baby at home i'm leaving this isp that i could work at until i'm in the dirt but i took a risk it was a calculated risk i liked the recruiter we talked a lot we did a lot of math and then i've mentioned before two months in i broke something big they could have easily been like dude you know that's your fault you're out but they protected me so but i think fortune favors the bold i mean you're going to have to take some risk if you're going to play it safe i don't know i don't know if you're really going to right like that 40 like was that a risk for them taking that contract yeah i mean they were full-time they had a direct hire role um they they did have to it was a year-long contract and and i'm just just a pro contract here a lot of states like texas are at will states there's really not much difference between direct hire isn't everything at will i feel like i mean i know pa is too yeah i think so most of the states i mean they say that you're safer and maybe that is i wonder if that's even a myth like that you're more insulated as a full-time than a contractor i don't know like is that i've always heard it's harder to get rid of a full-time employee right it well that's been my experience yeah i'll go sorry i was just saying that at cisco it was definitely easier to to end a contract with a contractor than it was to get rid of a full-time blue badge 100 you got to pay out like medical benefits to cobra gotcha eto and all that yeah so there is that for sure um before we lose the thread too much uh you mentioned something brittany you said that uh you were asking people you know what they are currently making to and you've got that you know that data that market data that's useful in your head um and it reminded me so one thing i would definitely say like full stop when uh how did how do maybe let me think about a better way to say this um like when someone asks me what you're making right now like at a recruiter asked me what i'm making right now like to me that's like klaxon's going off in my head i'm like i don't want to tell you what i'm making right now because i don't want to anchor any just further discussion we're going to have yeah about you know because i'm not interviewing for the job that i'm already in because you could be doubling your salary in this next job and you have no idea right yeah you know so so yeah so can you help me understand like what is that just for like market research so you can understand like what they're making like what is paying at you know what people are being paid in that salary or like yeah no that that's good to know too because like i could see how some recruiters will just call people literally like what are you making all right thanks you know and that's it be done with it um but it's if someone asking you like you know they're normally going to have a job there right and it's i like to find out the motivation for someone leaving so i i don't know i never even get to money within like honestly probably 10 minutes into a conversation with someone i like to actually build that connection they know what we're talking about but um you find out the motivation for why they are leaving so say they're like well i want to make more money so that's how it comes up and um i'll say well what are you looking for but um apart from that if i'm talking to you on the phone tim you you're kind of you're you're open to the idea right of talking to a recruiter so i want to find out why um and say maybe it's i don't know just the random reason and i say okay well financially you know what would you what would you even need to make a move i guess i would i would phrase it that way i've heard that a lot i've heard that one a lot yeah um it's it's a hard question for us on on our side of the phone because you know you're saying what would you need to make a move and i understand that where you're coming from but that's like a really quick because then you're anchoring yourself and saying well here's the num you know again we're throwing out our number we haven't even talked about how the position might be you know so that's a hard one right for me it is and um if i guess it like you wouldn't be actively looking at that point either so it's you know you wouldn't have to give me anything i would still know you're a good you're a good candidate or a good option so i would still con continue to bring jobs to you if you even you gave me the time of day you knew that one was relevant right like i don't really call people just to talk to them like if i'm on the phone with you i have one job at least one it's either a fit or not right so you'll know that that one was at least on track maybe it was only you know some wrong company whatever but you'll answer the next call you know and i'll get you know it could be a little bit closer it wouldn't know but i wouldn't i don't necessarily think giving even your range like shoot yourself in the foot or anything it comes down to the person to know like if they're gonna be you know worthless or not because i it makes me so happy to know like if this person's looking for a hundred thousand and i have a job that's 130 000 and they're perfect for it like oh my gosh that makes me so excited to go to them like i wouldn't be like oh my gosh they said only a hundred thousand i can't give you unless your salary unless your salary or compensation structure is structured to do that right we're talking about the recruiters that would do that and that's what makes it a hard conversation right because if i i'd go to you brittany with that information right but i would not take some random call from somebody i don't know and give them that information so that makes it tougher on you right and just you know be cautious with it if you answer a random call from a recruiter who is just very blunt if it if if something's interest interested you like say they said yeah network engineer job fully remote you're like okay i'll buy a little bit you know it's kind of interesting but they're still like you know being like what do you need what do you need you know maybe tell them something outrageous be like 250 000 right and then if one if it's not a real job and it's a waste of time they'll they'll go you won't waste your time anymore um you know and two then they'll actually give you the range and if you said that they'll probably give you the highest range or whatever they were told you know um so i would go out like that and then maybe you can even get in the interview from there right like they may not be the best recruiter but still an end you know what i just thought brett typically yeah in careers they teach you to negotiate at the end right you're brought in you meet everybody like you know you might have two or three interviews so it's kind of interesting in tech and with recruiters it's one of the first things talked about because because really and that's what's that's why i have the canon response i have you do not have enough information in that first conversation to give a real number i i don't you know you have a range well it's not it's not right it's not like i just don't know how much am i you know am i going to be on call a lot is going to be a lot of maintenance windows is the manager crazy what happened to the last 10 people that left like you know it's going to take some time to to figure out what your number would be and it's it's just not fair i think it's not realistic for the engineer to give that number but recruiters nine times out of ten ask in the first conversation so i don't know if that's specific to tech you don't waste each other's time either right i mean i i think that there's some value in at least making sure you're the same because network engineers make about the same depending on the market you're in right like if you're a network engineer with five years experience you're probably going to be making around the same yes palo alto is going to be you know more than kentucky but you know there's a cos there's probably a cost of living calculator right i mean wouldn't you say brit like is there that much of a delta between what your network engineer with x years of experience aren't we all kind of making after you adjust for uh cost of living it's probably the average or the mean is around the same like statistically speaking it should be if we all have the same skill set we're all doing basically the same job junior versus senior at our kitchen i would say as well um people that have contracted in their background do make more i um just because they have that background as well that market knowledge for i've i speak to so many people who have only been full-time same company 10 years hadn't gotten a raise in five years making a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars and they're like amazing amazing and it's like what are you doing like you know just i wish they would have called me over their 10 years there just so i could be like hey there's a contract you know making 80 an hour right with your skill set like just so they know like what they're worth but um yeah you you do get lost in your salary being full-time for a long time as well so sometimes it does even if you are happy just put some feelers out there you know see what your position is around the market will tell you i would agree that's great the market will tell you what you're worth right because i remember when i started interviewing a while back and they would ask right and i felt like listen i'm making like around 100 and i'm going to need 20 to even consider jumping because 10 grand isn't going to change my life and that's before taxes right so that was like my stock answer if they wouldn't give me the range so it was like 20 so basically you know i need 120 to continue and a few times i did and i had like four or five interviews it was a hospital system it sounded cool and all that stuff but at the end they're like you know we we i think like if we push it we might be able to get you 105 i'm like and they wanted me to commute into the city but but right but i told them upfront right like i told them up front 120 at least you know and yeah and they spent all this time with me and i interviewed with like four different people in the company over a week and at the end they're like well we're gonna need you to drive to all the hospitals every week and we can only give you five thousand dollars more like and you're going to be in the city snagit at a base city when i get a switch you're on call and if you weren't going to say that so now i'm probably losing money like it so you know there's a lot of experiences that i guess people i mean thank goodness for the good ones like you brit because it's there's just so many trust me i'm not perfect so andy i can give you a bit of a data point because i i've recently changed jobs and for the most part i'm doing the same thing right like post sales deployment engineer at a at a previous job there was some team lead uh responsibilities rolled in there the salaries are vastly different and the stress levels are vastly different and the amount of travel that i'm doing is vastly different and i make at least 50 more than i used to with less stress less travels awesome yeah yeah yeah so so i don't i don't think that they're i don't think that the average i don't think that there is an accurate you're right you're right so i have to ask you the andy question i mean you got kids how'd you do it no but it's like seriously like how did you garner fifty percent more so like did a recruiter approach you did you know somebody at this con for a position i i applied for a position i went through the process and it came time to negotiate the salary and they said well what do you make now and i said look i'm going to tell you right now that i'm looking for a job because i don't feel like i'm fairly paid i don't want the moon that's a good way to put it i i just want to be fairly paid i have a skill set here's what i can do i've been honest with you and upfront about my experience and my capabilities what i'm confident in i've been honest with you about where i want to go what does that garner that's what i want to know right like i don't want to ask for more than i am worth i just want to be paid what i'm worth and and then they that's what's so useful to have another day yeah when i tried to i didn't give them a number and then they went away they came back and they gave me a number i had a number in my head how much higher was i was willing were you like oh my god i would never would i ask for this yes yeah yeah when they came back and made me an offer it was so much more than what i was expecting myself i didn't negotiate i just said yeah sure it happened aj did you say that to a recruiter or just someone in an interview or like after the interview i said that to the the director right like okay so somebody within the company who's a hiring person yeah okay right it wasn't it wasn't an hr recruiter thing it was it was like somebody in the food chain in my in in the part of the organization in charge right right part of me wonders if it doesn't make a huge difference it being like you talking directly to the person making that decision versus you talking to a recruiter external or internal right sure who would then pass along that information because then they're talking to you as a person yeah and i agree with you and your reasons but lots of people get jobs without a recruiter being in the middle right we're we're talking about recruitment because we have access to brittany but obviously like for example this job that i just took there were no recruiters involved actually um i knew i know a guy i'm very very good friends with a guy who works at aviatrix um he asked if i'd be interested in talking to them i was very happy at cisco but i'm i'm i'm very much of the always keep here to the ground type of person plus to be honest i was actually interested in what they were doing so i passed my resume over went to a hiring manager hiring manager set up interviews we did interviews you know so on so forth right there was no i didn't even apply right like so there's lots of situations where that happens as well and that's another reason why i say that this industry this networking industry is allowed a lot more than switching packets there's a lot more networking in this industry you just said the truth there i got i got found on twitter for my current same um job wanted to talk about the external versus internal recruiter when you mentioned um oh gosh what was the point you just mentioned um how i have i reached to how i got uh recording oh if they have any say so in like the actual budget or if they can change it yeah so with internal recruiters they really they won't have any like weight behind changing that budget right that's going to come down to the internal sales team or marketing whoever does the budget but for external recruiters we we do actually we are able to go directly to the hiring manager and be more of like a consultant you know and be like hey we need to actually look at upping this so a lot of times if you are working with an external recruiter it is it could be better to go through them if you trust them to prove your case well right because they could they could kind of be more consultative around it and take that bullet for you but um but yeah did that just make sure you trust them if they could but they could actually negotiate for you as well does that make sense so the other thing oh that this is a great segue because andy is something we were talking about just popped in my head now that's that's that's i love that you said that brittany um something we were talking about andy uh on the discord and it just came back to my head was we were talking about like recruiters hiring managers these people they do they this is what they do day in and day out right you're you're sitting here coming with the tin cup like all over twists asking for money and and you're tied up emotionally in the entire transaction right and these these people this is what they do all day there's no there's no uh skin in the game there's skin in the game but there's not that same type of attachment and they do it all the time it's like a sales thing like you said right they used car sales when someone that's what they do all day in and day out they're not going to be as tied up and emotionally in it as as you know the person negotiating the salary that might change their life it's gonna be and some people use that to their advantage and and and you know some don't right but but the point is when you're advocating for yourself and negotiating that salary um you know you need to be able to try to pull your own emotions out of it as much as possible make it more of a math problem to be solved than you know this emotional weight that you're putting behind everybody puts behind their salary right because everybody ties their salary to their life their livelihood their life and that's like so right you have to learn to be uncomfortable to negotiate to negotiate anything and people who negotiate for a living know that and like you we talked about tim use that to their advantage you know when i said don't get my number and this is what i say and then i ask for a range and i shut up it's a very uncomfortable when i sold cars i we would i try to be closing someone and i give them the final thing and then just stare at them and and it seems like forever but it's a power play right it really is and whoever talks next loses it's a thing google it and and like aj i'm so proud of what you did because you it couldn't have been a very comfortable thing to be you know interviewing at the company you want to be at and they're asking you for a number and you're not giving it your response was great what you told them because it was based in honesty right like i was undervalued where i was i know i have a skill set i'm not shooting for the moon and but you did everything right didn't give them the number and then they came back with a number higher than you expected and that's happened to me in my last two jobs so to me that secret sauce is you know everything we're talking about here is just so useful and helpful because most people don't want to be uncomfortable and they're like oh geez what if i lose this opportunity oh i really better take it like it might go away they might give it to somebody else i mean that's another trick in sales the takeaway you know well you know i got three other people looking at the car so that's okay you know along those lines yeah conversions yeah yeah manufactured urgency along those lines though we're all speaking mostly from like experience and we all are fairly confident in our skill sets right but uh for somebody who is brand new or nearly brand new i feel like maybe the advice could change a bit right because they won't have the benefit of that like confidence behind them like yes i have this skill set i have proven it before in past jobs um i am more confident in asking for this salary right so what can we tell newer people to networking like i hear what you're saying and i'm not disagreeing with you but i was not confident in my last two jobs that i applied for and got i was not qualified to build real networks because i was sitting in a knock staring at spectrum for two years but i took a chance and a leap and took a job that i wasn't sure i could do and the same in the role i'm at now so i get what you're saying but i've also not been you know there's a fake until you make it kind of thing for me and you can fake you know confidence i mean it's really easy to be scared and be timid and but you take a deep breath and you know what you're gonna say before you go in and it's almost like dating right this is ridiculous but like the opposite gender they can sense desperation a mile away speaking as a guy but when you're confident you get your baton away with a stick so confidence is and i'm half joking right but i hear what you're saying but you can fake it till you make it you can go into that conversation and appear confident because like what britney's what did you say less than one percent this is why we're having the show for those new people less than one percent of people and it was one point okay right but like hardly any technically skilled people are out of work right now right and we're one of the highest paid whatevers you know besides doctors and lawyers and all that stuff so yeah and we're it's a skill like we have a hard to earn skill that so we have value and i get what you're saying when you're new it's scary and you don't but you got to get plugged into the community and talk to recruiters like brittany and listen to shows like this that are like listen you're probably worth more than you think you are and if you give that recruiter your number you're just going to shoot yourself in the foot because if you listen to andy and aj's last two stories about their last two negotiations and how they did it didn't give their number they weren't jerks about it and the people came back with way more money than either one would have asked for that's the golden thing right there right for somebody to give you more money than you ever would have asked for and i was not confident in either of those negotiations but i knew how to play the game and that's the trick if you know some tricks at least for me i you know if you know how the game works you can play the game but if you're just mr timid don't know anything scared you're gonna get undercut the recruiter is going to make that extra money and the co or the company is going to be like great the isp i was at was huge for bringing people in on visas and underpaying them because those people because oh yeah that's right but that's a tactic right there's a lot of recruitment companies like that too um the opposite way to why we have bad names for us and the ones that will get those massive margins that you care about like there's so many ways to underpay technically proficient people and you really have to learn how they if you don't know that you're going to be a victim but you know there's some tricks so lexi i wanted to because i think what you're getting to the heart of why we're doing the show right and he said it himself as well and you're getting to the heart of why we're doing the show right it's for those new people who don't have the confidence who don't have the experience and i actually wouldn't change my advice there i would say try to make it a math problem because you have to take because and when i say that i don't mean like a simple like hey i need to make this much to pay my bills part of that calculation needs to be well okay i'm starting out is this a place going to give me the experience that i'm looking for is it going to look good on a resume am i going to want to spend a year of my life here can i afford to spend a year of my life here right that's all part of the that needs to be part of that calculation part of that math problem i say math problem but i'm not talking about necessarily just like numbers for salary right um especially when you're starting out right but you when you go in desperate that's when you get taken advantage of and that's another reason why you got to you got to pull back on the emotions as much as possible you have to make an amount no that's great advice yeah that's kind of what i was hoping to hear from from y'all um sorry i like that no you're good i like that you say make it a math problem because one of the things i've thought about coming in here is have data don't just say i want this money you know or i need this full stop like why what what do you bring to the table i mean obviously you this company you want them to pay you but you do need to show what you bring to the table too in a way so i i always like to have that dated like you mentioned there's things that what's important to you is it extra certifications you know is it um the the health reimbursement maybe you need that extra money for for health care or maybe they pay tuition you've got young kids and that wouldn't be important to me but that could be important for someone else who you know wants to pay for their kids college um there's so many different things to like to think about on what could be important for that perspective but look at it all as well like for entry level too because a lot of people just get caught up in that base salary like right away but maybe even being an entry level and taking um you know a 10 000 less base than what all your other friends are getting or all the other peers but you're going to have five more certifications before them because your company's paying for it like that's way more valuable for someone entry-level you know who doesn't have that their savings or anything um that's something to absolutely look at i think here here's there's more than just money at stake right like it very often in positions like the ones that we're in you're gonna have extras like you know subscriptions to learning platforms so you can learn you know the ability to expense things like you know if if the company's not providing the subscription to the platform maybe you can expense it um you can expense a couple of tries on a certification exam right like usually you either company's not going to pay for it until you pass or they'll pay for one failure and then again when you pass right like there's there's lots of other things that go into this salary so i think you have a very valid point okay maybe you're taking you're taking in ten thousand dollars a year less than your peers but maybe you're paid hourly when you're on call that your peers aren't maybe you're given a flat fee just to be on call and your peers aren't so there's lots of other things to take into that calculation i absolutely and i i think it can even come down to things like medical benefits provided yeah i've been through quite a few and it's like some i'd never want to go back to because it was horrible to get any type of you know appointment done but there's some that are great and it's like that would weigh heavy to me now when considering an offer like oh yeah yeah i've got a family and that's one of my primary concerns when i look at like you know a new position right like what's the medical benefits like what do they cover exactly like and now you know i'm working for a company that's national and i live in one part of the united states like does their medical insurance cover where i live where am i always going to be like out of area or whatever you know and have to pay exponentially more yeah i mean yeah that's why it comes down to absolutely everything like it comes down to even like the range like we talked about you know don't expect the highest don't get mad if you're given the lowest because maybe there's twenty thousand dollars and other stuff sitting around you weren't even sure about or you didn't know about you know it's just find out around everything and you know about the whole package which i know people talk about but i feel like they don't really dig deep enough on the details so i i've got a question in this post you know almost post coveted most people see it as postcode but like through the major portion of the pandemic you know where a lot of people are working either remotely or hybrid does the location still really come into account right like is is the cost of living still accounted for as part of your salary like you know just because i live in vermont and i work for a company that you know is a larger national company and i travel a lot for work whatever like is it still accounted for or are they trying to be more competitive across the board because the work's remote honestly i i feel like everything's just gone up all the salaries have gone up budgets have gone up people are yeah so has inflation you know tech talent is needed yeah i know um yeah and to be honest i never really saw like the the difference between cost of living and and by that i mean before covid when i would recruit roles in california like i never saw them go up the rates were still low it's almost like the clients there just weren't really adjusting it you know and now i'm finding that they're just gone up with the same as the others so i don't i don't know if cost of living is okay done much um yeah i found that just people are paying more now which is good to negotiate i'm glad we're doing this too it's you know people are paying you're you deserve it you don't ask you don't get so hey a1 fans aj here for an ally you ever heard of net ally sure you have they came from the same group of engineers that brought us network tools from fluke networks netscout and now their net ally they know networking i'm a network engineer for a partner and when i go to customers and see they use net ally i know it's going to be so much easier to troubleshoot issues we might run into the name may have changed in that ally but the way they build tools hasn't changed a bit they ask what would a network engineer want to help make their job faster and easier and then they go build it just like this etherscope nxg netally is here to help netally simplicity visibility collaboration visit netally.com today now back to the show i want to circle back to what lexi said you reminded me of something as we were talking and i have a very short story about it but if you don't place a high value on your own time absolutely no one will and here's my cute little story that was real so lex like you're saying if you're new and you're not confident and maybe you're not comfortable with faking it you have to value your time and this is why because i had a cousin who needed he bought a house and he had a bunch of ethernet that was pulled but none of it was terminated and he knew i was a cable guy so he's like hey can you help me yeah sure man i spent like five hours there terminating like two or three dozen lines and ran some stuff and you know i spent a good portion of my day there no he's my cousin right he's family i'm not gonna charge family friends this is you know you're my i mean whatever we're family i love you no like this is just me helping you a year later he's a he's like a contractor kind of guy they do all kinds of stuff construction plumbing electric a year later i had a problem with my bathtub faucet it was leaking something was funny so i asked him to come out and help me and he did and three days later i got a bill for six hundred dollars now here's the difference it's my own fault here's the difference justin values his time he places a high value on his time and he doesn't give his time away for free me i didn't value my time i gave it away for free and then i wanted to be mad because somebody valued their time and i didn't so that's my point is if you you know if you can't fake confidence at least know that your skill set is valuable your time is your most valuable asset and if you're not comfortable charging a fair rate for your time and if you're in tech that rate should be higher than the bag person at this grocery store you know like you should be making some good money in this field and and if if you're not and you're willing to take a crappy rate and a crappy pay you you just you're not placing a high enough value on your skill set and and your time like i did and and i'll never do that again you know what i mean i learned my lesson man i'd agree that's a good advice point to entry level people the time is a commodity i mean even i think i feel like now when do you become mid is it around five years you're out of that entry level i would say for tech i want to say four to five yeah for me i'm gonna say can someone explain that to me while we're at it because i don't know yeah i'm gonna think yeah so you know um i lost my train of thought well the five years i got so upset i think there's there's lots of different types of jobs and so if you've worked in it for five years you might consider yourself a senior but if you've worked that five years doing the same exact thing day in and day out are you really a senior i mean one year exactly right like this yeah i think there's something to you know the skill set to have your skill sets grown okay are you confident in being able to do more on your own and asking questions maybe a little bit less about the systems that you've been working with for a period of time right like i there's there's definitely there's got to be some growth in if you want to get the the senior title i feel like i feel like five years is a mark i work with this guy joe who was like you know why most of the job description you see went five or more years experience because those first five years you're touching everything for the first time you're breaking stuff you're you're you're a liability but if you give it about five years you've seen a lot and you've stepped on a couple land mines and you have some but no you know a lot of people don't want that person with you know six months experience that's gonna break stuff because they just don't know you know you can't you can't teach experience it just takes time yeah that's that's what i was going to say time is a commodity being a good point for entry-level people you could very like people can take advantage of you you know if you're entry level and you realize you're wasting your your time even at your job doing things that aren't relevant to your your advancement you know you may be doing computer work when you want to be actually racking and pulling cables you know so it's value your time and your duties in that job too i think yeah because i'll say when i first started like not that long ago um i was i took a pretty damn low salary um because it was so much more than i ever thought i would make in my life ever um and i would never have been able to be like you know what nasty low because i didn't even have a ccna i had no experience so when he said something when he gave me a salary that was double what i had made before i was like all right and then he apologized my old manager yeah he was like look i'm really sorry i can only offer you like uh what like 60k he was like i can only offer you 60k and i was like i'll take it exactly that's a living salary plus some you know like um yeah which now i know like that is i think industry level it's it's low but i would i would i would argue that nothing i would argue that someone without experience who took two community college classes with no ccna that's good money well right so like i don't think that you did yourself a disservice in that scenario like there's no absolute number okay like in your point of reference if you can double your income and and that makes a difference in your life that's awesome and i don't think it's an absolute number like well you didn't hit 100 so you're not like no it's yeah everybody's situation's different money money when you're single without a mortgage and kids and all that crap and like college funds is different than when all this responsibility comes right so the numbers are different you know aj tim and i might have different relationships with money because i don't even get to see it anymore it kind of just goes through my hands and things get paid for and you know must be nice well yeah well everybody gets my money on there make it uncomfortable everybody gets my money is what i'm saying college funds and savings accounts and yeah i see another way to help uh break the pull the emotion out of your uh out of the um the whole salary negotiation piece i think is to do what you guys are kind of hitting on which is to reframe the discussion as you're selling it's not it is what you're doing but you don't ever think of it this way right so it's a reframe um you're selling your labor right you're selling your time what is your time worth like literally what is the dollar value assign that you're going to assign to your uh to your time right so that's another way to kind of pull the emotion a little bit further back and and and make it more of a math problem if you will so your advice for people sorry just because like i'm sure there are people out there like me who can relate not everybody but like you're just to reiterate and tell me if i'm wrong but like your advice our advice collectively as a group to people who are like new slash don't are having trouble valuing their time very highly whether it's because they're not as experienced or they don't have all the certs or whatever it may be the advice is like kind of basically like get over it like value yourself right is that what works or not and get underpaid right i mean you have a choice yeah i'm serious right like but like but like work on that right like because i needed somebody to tell me that back in the day i didn't have anyone right so i really want to just like hit it home because um i am super super introverted and get anxiety around phone calls and talking about money and all that stuff so like um i i would i don't think i would have been and if i was selling a car to you i could do anything i wanted to you financially yeah and recruiters who are paid to underpay you are doing the same thing so you can continue like right i mean it's like real talk so you can be a victim because you're scared or you can take some of these skills and be like i'm not giving my number i don't have enough information if you're not going to give me a range i don't really know if there's anything left to talk about now you might be terrified that they're going to hang up and this is the last job offer you're ever going to get in your life so it's it's like that's but it won't be it's that selfish it won't be that's the hardest part like you're just you're desperate and and and i and i was too i gathered and and i really wanted the job yeah so and i always want to say what we always say i mean people can reach out to us everybody on the show is accessible if we didn't hit your question or if you want to have you know i mean we do tim does like well i don't want to blast you tim but people do like resume critiques i mean tim looked at my resume and helped me a ton i do but even if you want to hit us up we can talk about something specific with salary we didn't hear um you know maybe we do something aj and the discord was salary transparency i don't know how we would do that because everybody's user names on their post but somehow anonymize like people could just throw in their job title and their salary because at least it gives you a baseline when you are that new person like well i don't know as a junior knock technician what i should be asking i mean britney might be a great resource too but you know how do you get that information and how can we help i think we should put those links brittany that you mentioned for like the salary stuff and the show notes you know any way we can help because i mean we don't have anything figured out right we just have our experience and we were hoping to share some of that here but um definitely i think it should be less taboo overall for people to share their salaries because we this is a community that you guys are doing too and you all want to you know grow that and everyone be successful so just if people i know you don't ever want to become a braggy or anything but if there are ways to utilize more anonymous you know forums or whatever just to know about that because it it's exciting to get those big salaries and to know what's possible right at least to know the ceiling like oh wow okay i mean that's that's that's a person that i don't think is all that bright and they're getting paid a lot i can too you know i mean talking about myself here i'm not talking to anybody else i think it's worth going back to the conversation that we've had previously right like these positions are written by non-technical people i like i think i've told the story numerous times that nine years ago i applied for a network admin position and one of the qualifications desired was a ccie and it was a sixty-five thousand dollar a year job you see that a lot right so so there's there's there's gonna be organizations that you know the the salary ranges are going to vary wildly like if you when you even begin to try to set out to do your own research on this it's just going to be all over the place for this exact reason right because it's all going to come down to how much does the organization organization value people that do the work that we're doing right and when they don't understand the work that we're doing they're not going to put appropriate values and that could go in either direction they could put absorbent amounts of cash tied to this like you know way over pay for what you're doing you know they could pay somebody 250 000 a year for less than junior network level uh stuff because they don't understand the position they think it's magic smoke and mirrors um and then of course we see a lot more of the other side though where we're underpaid undervalued for the skill sets that we bring and the amount of work that we do and keeping the lights on and making sure the business can function so i i don't i don't really know how because i've tried to do this myself like i have had conversations with brittany and she's given me great information on based on my skillshare but based on my certifications based on x y and z here's what i should expect to fetch in a range uh but brittany like she's not everywhere right like i can't just search and find that information all over the place so she's got some great data points and i don't want to send everybody to brittany's email box and flood her without with all these questions like this um so i guess my next question would be where are some good places where we can find out appropriate ranges based on skill sets right like if i'm an entry-level person and i either don't have my ccna when i'm working on it or maybe i just got my ccna and i don't yet have a job experience like what's what's a range that we could expect for that level also by gender if possible because um i don't you know probably better women and yeah and race um women and people of color get paid less than white men i think everybody knows that at this point um but yeah i mean we there there are like specific guides out there for women um or like other minority groups like how do you negotiate salary as a person a part of this group right so it is really really salary transparency also helps people you know who are part of groups that are typically underpaid in any industry um but also of course tech yeah so if a website includes that information or any resources include that extra information i mean that that would be great ah now i got i'm gonna see what i can do with our website in a google spreadsheet and we're gonna figure this out ah yeah i love it let's let's figure out how to make it happen i was just thinking too as you were talking about women i have placed zero women network engineers in five years there aren't that many of us it's so bad yeah it's yeah it's sad a lot of ba business analysts project program managers um but no female network engineers i don't know what it is do you ever get the opportunity to like suggest well i guess that is part of your job right like suggest suggest a sort of different so i've met female data center technicians like uh way more of them than i've met like network engineers for sure um and i really think that data center techs um like handling that hardware can really like they have a unique perspective on things not a lot of like a lot of network engineers have not actually worked in a data center and like handled all the hardware like especially like a global 24 7 environment too yeah like that helps it's key yeah i worked a remote job and only ever like talked to the data center techs and told them like hey can you swap this cable or whatever but i think that a woman who had come from you know position like that or you know something else tangentially related might make a good network engineer and i just always wondered like if you ever see you know people moving from those roles into like network engineering roles and oh all the time okay i do i do and we can even talk about it on the side too if you haven't yeah sorry we can take this off we're running real long but i kind of like to hear about it too but that's what well we all can lexi it's nice i would like to change from data to data i don't what's sad is i don't mean to say data like it just comes out no it's nice i like that you're saying this is a guy i'm trying to pay you a compliment i say exactly but everybody makes fun of me they're like no it's example i say exam and they've been making fun of me forever on exam exam exam but everybody goes well how do you say you say like it's exactly but you guys say exams anyway it's it's a fun little so so i just i just looked up like ccna salary expectations and i don't know if payscale.com is one of those brit that you like but that's you know they have an average of so what i was hoping which we can't do right but i was hoping it's like listen if you have a ccna you should be able to make 60 grand i know that doesn't work and you can't do blanket statements but on pay scale he said the average ccna is 64 000. now again who knows how accurate that is i'd honestly think that's higher i think it would be a little bit higher but that might be helpful for people right like somebody with a ccna who has no clue like should they accept no less than 60 grand i don't right 50 grand might change their life and i don't want to tell them not to but where's the baseline right higher than 60. that's helpful yeah like you're saying it should be higher than 60. all right listeners like take that into account maybe it should be higher than 60. i don't know for a lot of the knock rolls i've been seeing these are anywhere from three to five years of experience um as well so not completely entry more the junior three years but um they're anywhere from 40 to 50 an hour which is right at 80 to 100k um and that's that's not far off from where you'd be at you know at one year of experience you're not gonna go from 30 to 80k oh my god oh my god that was that that was a win that was good my face damn brit i thought we were cool oh oh my god that might be a good place to stop aj no no i'm gonna let brittany keep going because that was good the wind's out of my sails i'm gonna go i'm gonna go lay down old man he's a nap oh my god oh man well before we do wrap it up though let's try to summarize like the negotiation piece so you know i have i think that you should have a number in mind you should be informed on you know what your value is but don't share that number right off the get-go open the door to try to have a conversation what's the range you know and i've said stuff like well i you know this is a different position for me i don't really know what to expect can you give me a range right or uh you know in my previous example i said something like i feel like i'm undervalued and that's why i'm even applying for a job in the first place so i'd love to hear what you know what you believe this position is valued at kind of thing so um what are some other uh tools that we can give folks when they go to negotiate a salary if we were to assemble two i think yeah um those are great points because that their answers will also tell you if you want to work at that company as well they come back to you um but yeah be confident you know do some research as well like before you even receive an offer i'll i'll give some links of um websites i know where there's at least some anonymous salaries or whatever but i have an idea of what to expect don't expect the max because you'll set yourself up for disappointment and look at every single aspect of the package as well um that's it make it a math problem like i said take the emotion out of it make it a math problem that's more like what you said aj about the conversation like you have to get people talking and again i'm leaning back on like sales but this is negotiation right like the conversation is important and you have to get the other side talking because people will reveal themselves and the data to you but they won't if they're not talking so maybe that's one of those tricks right like if you're scared and you're not confident like just you know there's there's tricks right like open-ended questions don't ask questions that have yes or no answers uh yeah these are like little salesy tricks but it's also just conversational i was a i was a much more introverted shy person until i had to sell for a living and a couple little tricks like asking questions you know i have a lot of people say like you ask great questions like i learned it in sales and i'm genuinely curious i want to know about things in people but that's that's an easy way to fake it ask questions get the conversation going get them talking they'll tell you they'll tell you what you're looking for you know and you're building rapport the whole conversation so now they're more comfortable and and and and you know i just want to reiterate like don't be afraid to reach out of your comfort zone like like the job description spirit right like i don't know i remember somebody saying like man if you got 30 of what they have listed an interview like don't feel for because if i didn't i'd never interview for anything because they are looking for those unicorns aj right like sixty one thousand dollars triple ccie required you know you'll see that stuff yep so yep yeah ten how long until that's not a joke right but if you can learn everything in the ccna blueprint you can learn whatever technology stack you don't have experience in and if you find a place that will give you that shot they like you you're personable maybe you have you know maybe you have a you can communicate maybe have a blog all the stuff we've talked about over the years right but somebody that'll give you a shot you know if you can learn bgp you can learn another protocol if you can learn it's all transferable right once which i think is why the ccna is such a great barometer if you can get through that and learn all that stuff you can probably learn whatever technology stack is in there you know we can teach a cloud we just need to give you some time or automate you know whatever it might be so just reach don't don't put don't put limits on yourself you know what i mean reach reach beyond your comfort level and but yeah man this this has been really great i hope i hope people get some some help out of this i know i hope if i've said anything of you oh it's been fantastic are you kidding me oh yeah yeah this has been an awesome conversation thank you yeah i do want to thank you guys too i do want to take a minute uh and plug a video series that brittany and i have been working on uh dan is editing it and it will be released soon it's called career bits with brit and brittany and i talk about all these different parts of you know preparing your resume getting ready for an interview uh and the value you know certifications and stuff bringing we're touching on a lot of different topics they're going to be nice bite-sized consumable videos and we're going to release them exclusively on our youtube channel so you can look for that very soon i promise you don't do it with salary negotiation or nobody will watch this no no we'll send people right back here we'll send people right back here to this episode uh for for that one for that one so yeah we need to get on those again actually yes yes dan's uh he's he's working on the first five and we're gonna release those but i think we're gonna do like the first three all at once to really show people what we're doing and then we're going to release the rest uh in a like every two weeks or something like that and then well while that's happening you and i will record some more and finish up that series i'm excited hopefully i always feel like when i talk it's like that made me oh no it's been great it's been fantastic it's the feeling i have at the end of each one of these shows we do about myself i'm like oh god of my daughter well andy i can't say the same for you um i want to say thank you to our patreons for joining us tonight uh it's always great to chat with them while we record these episodes if you want to join us and chat with us and ask questions of our guests and just be a part of the fun you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of netenge and you too can be a part of the fun uh we hope to see you in the chat and not join super late when we're wrapping stuff up thanks chris for being here wow uh big thanks to our guests brittany and tim thank you so much for joining us i don't feel like this conversation's done i'm sure we're going to be back here doing this again if you want to have more conversations like this discord server is where this started and it's absolutely up here so you know get involved in a community and start having these conversations and we have an awesome one if you want to hop in there and like i want to reiterate reach out to any one of us i will be happy to help you with any of this stuff including you know salary negotiation we want to help yep interviews resumes all that fun stuff we've been there we've done that happy to share our experience i've just now seen all 80 messages it's a party for the patreons oh awesome well thank you so much for joining us and uh we'll see you back next week on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast hey y'all this is lexi if you vibe with what you heard us talking about today we'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast in your favorite podcatcher also go ahead and hit that bell icon to make sure you're notified of all our future episodes right when they come out if you want to hear what we're talking about when we're not on the podcast you can totally follow us on twitter and instagram at art of neteng that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find a bunch more info about us and the podcast at art of network engineering dot com thanks for listening you