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 get to know your co-host section of the show where we try to put the proper words and phrases together to do some justice to describe one of your beloved a1 co-hosts alright folks he's dapper hard-working one heck of a dad and i hear he knows his way around a driveway basketball court his hobbies include long walks in small circles with a pair of tongs around a smoker daily tea parties and lengthy banter with howdy packet he's still not sure whether or not tim actually likes him you guessed it we're talking about andy laptop join andy and his co-hosts on this week's episode of the art of network engineering i thought you were talking about no i'm just kidding thank you tim i feel like it's been so long since i've heard a tim intro that was so nice to to have a tim intro i am aj murray at no blinky blinky and i am very excited to welcome a new co-host to the team at track at pixar welcome winning thank you so much for the goat scream i feel like a real part of the team now so excited to be here thank y'all thank you all so much the uh the goat scream is like the equivalent of you know smashing a bottle of champagne against the hall of about when it gets ready to launch you know that's what it felt like it really felt like let's get let's get this thing done it's a maiden voyage we're going off to explore the world i love it i like it or outer space that that's not how i feel i don't feel the same way but i like you i like your enthusiasm keep it down leprechaun sorry that was a little sad tim all right uh so he is at timbertino on the twitters tim how you doing i'm excellent aj hope everybody's doing well uh i'll echo it lexi i know we've said it before but uh it's great to have you here you've been part of multiple shows now and and everything's going really well especially hosting the the women in tech podcast and you've just you've got this energy and following on on socials and it's it's great to bring that into the show thank you for joining yeah thank you tim and dan howdy packet howdy dan how you doing howdy aj so i'm doing wonderful just to get that out of the way um and i also have an announcement oh special news from dan i'm sorry how long is that dremel ever it's impressive i'm not even mad yeah so uh we have baby number two on the way all right congratulations yay so gonna be a papa again excellent any other details to share yet okay human human yes yes it's it's it is a human we okay i was going to ask is it a human or a packet i just i wasn't you know just yeah it's it's it's not a power factor i'm not sure how to i'm not sure how is it oh god that's fantastic news congratulations to you and your wife dan that's great thank you thank you can't wait to meet uh howdy packet junior junior junior junior how do you pack at the third fragment fragment oh yeah there we go all right we'll take it but they're discarded sometimes yeah you know you're right it did kind of sound like an insult i didn't mean that i'm sorry fragment sounds a little sad yeah i'm sorry that was terrible how could i have said that we can cut it out tim it's all right that gets a cute little nickname though yeah little fragment yeah well there's a little packet crawling around little packet i like it learn how to walk got a nickname they're not even born yet gotta love it until you gotta change their pictures it sounds like a schoolhouse rock song you can discard that one yeah hopefully it's full of rent frames and not jumbo frames oh god and last but not least andy laptop andy laptop you can find him on permit ip andy andy no permit ipandy andy.com too many andys how you doing andy that was kind of your cue i wasn't sure if you were done rambling i'm not no no no you look like yeah more uh i'm good tim called me dapper and that just made my day so i'm you know i can't really i can't beat that that's it's the highlight of my day unfortunately see your your your hair always looks the way that it does and i have to put on my leprechaun hat so you don't have to look at my hair so you get that name you look great sam i could never pull that hat off but you're just killing it too thank you appreciate it yeah what's new in andy's world uh man i don't know where to start uh a lot of good stuff i'm i'm in a new world and uh i like it well i have a feeling we're gonna get to more of that here in a sec so uh but before we do that let's get to some wins love that scream all right if you can't tell he's been waiting to do that right yeah it's only been a few months winning in our discord channel this week is tata the automator they were offered a new position as a network engineer congratulations nice dude that guy's been killed yeah the slope there is just ridiculous he's on he's on fire and he gave a shout out that his physical lab made a big difference in his interview that was really cool yeah nice take that did he tag you yeah he did he did yeah it helped them right yeah that's exciting i want to let the new people know that like get that's how you get experience right right yep river passed the aviatrix certified engineer and multi-cloud networking associate congratulations river nice that's a popular one i'm saying it was good it was good to see river take like a three-day break uh steven mcnutt passed the emerging tech in cyber security course eight days into the semester that's uh that's pretty crazy that's wow wow eight days in pass the class get it out of the way why not bam all right uh ganesh was promoted to a senior network engineering position congratulations ganesh excellent nice congrats uh peter hunt got their first job in tech at spectrum congratulations for breaking in yeah there you go get some good internet uh new name on the list this week a deal con re-certified there's cce appds which is the citrix certified expert in app delivery and security congratulations a deal never heard of it must be new do you only have one for this year so far deal i'm a little disappointed we're already a couple weeks into the new year yeah why don't you at least have three i'm just just saying congrats a deal awesome that's awesome and uh mike v2 was promoted to manager of network services at his job congratulations mike that's great nice i love his username lots of promotions lately it's like everyone's getting promoted at the beginning of the year that's it's uh it's it's funny that last year ended with a ton of certifications so many people passed certs before the end of the year i don't know if it was like the month was slow at work so people took the time to study or they were just trying to cram in those goals at the last minute but uh or everybody's boss said you better pass this cert if you want to get your promotion there we go that's what it looks like and then they all got promoted yeah there you go it works out new patreons joining us this week we got show cdp neighbor adam hoyt i think i screwed that up uh and jeffrey v thank you so much for your support of what we do here at the art of network engineering and appreciate it just a couple of extra pieces of errata uh we are doing our listener survey right now we could really use your help with the feedback we uh get the information from you we share that with potential sponsors we learned how you consume our content and we want to know what you want to see and hear from us in the future uh so please take some time to do the listener survey you can find a link for that in the show notes or the description of the video and we were named finalists for the cisco it blog awards congratulations uh so what does that mean that means you need to go vote you can find a link in our show notes again you can go and vote for all of your favorite content creators a ton of people made the list the finalists list this year but very happy that the art of network engineering is on there if you like what we're doing please give us a vote we'd appreciate that can we get little i voted for you yes that'd be great just just like the paint palette and it says i voted on it you know yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah that's great that's great excellent well i think it's time to do a show yes so andy you've uh you've been through quite a journey the past couple of months and um it's it's been interesting because we we've kind of been along the ride with you right since since the whole whole process started uh and so we'd like to go back in time a little bit and you know have you walk us through the transition from you know your old job to your new job and i i guess i'd like to start with how are things going at the new job and let's go back and kind of start why did you feel like it was time to move on um yeah um the new job is going great uh what did i do today um i was working you know it's funny when i hear myself say stuff i'm like really that's me like so today i was working on trying to build a dev environment in our lab let's just take a moment and realize that andy mister i can't stand python automation as hell you know this is awful what's happening to network engineers like yeah i i reached out to eric joe and john capobianco on the side and asked them some questions like hey i gotta get you know an environment in here i can play around with some python in our lab and i wasn't really sure how to do it and another guy on my team was doing it a different way so i couldn't really you know bug him so so anyway that's i mean i'm building like dev environments like what i mean not really right i just got to get some linux stuff going on a server but um you know new year news andy yeah um but it's going really well i'm meeting a lot of people uh they're all super smart um they're all super nice um you know and and working at a vendor is um see it might be annoying this whole episode i'm trying to choose my words carefully because i i don't you know i i really like it so far i mean granted i've been there two weeks right so talk to me six twelve months from now and i might be like dear god but uh what have i done so it's it's really cool to be i guess on the other side of the table maybe i don't know what metaphor to use but i've been a consumer of you know i i've worked on probably almost every vendor's gear in my in my relatively short career um so to be on the other side and to be in meetings and to see road maps and things that the public doesn't even know about yet that's kind of exciting right like wow this thing sounds amazing and nobody outside of this org even knows about it yet like that that feels kind of neat you know you spent years eating the sausage now you get to see how the sausage is made yeah kind of you know great analogy so so that's part i think of why i'm just so excited because i'm like whoa this you know you kind of get a peek behind the curtain um yeah you know there's people on calls who have been working with customers for you know months about features that the customer asked for and then they went and worked with a whole team to build and test and get those features working and you know now they're you know they're talking about you know releasing that version like you know when when we're in prod and we're working on stuff and you have to like upgrade your code you know off a bug or a new feature or whatever just i had never once contemplated that there's just whole hordes of people at vendors spending countless hours working on that creating that you know fixing the bug or adding a feature and and testing and just i don't know it's just kind of neat my mind's a little blown right now um by the whole process but the culture's great you know i i really uh i have a lot to say about it so maybe as we get into the timeline you know we can we can we can flesh some of it out um yeah i think one thing i want to interject here for a second is what was your first job in it i was pulling wires on a verizon central office frame so you went from a cable guy even before cable guy like that was cable like structured structured cable yeah like it was called a frame attendant so you know a frame attendant okay so if you that sounds fancy this little zippy thing and so so i'm learning about right now i'm learning about uh khloe architecture and yeah it all for like spine leaf and fabrics and stuff is it but is it pronounced clothes he was french it's spelled i've been saying it wrong so i'm glad i don't say it very often but the reason i bring that up is he was working for the phone companies it was a telecom thing in the 50s that he did and there were these metal crossbars that they built in these central offices to connect you know your house has a telephone pole with a wire connected to it for your phone and then it goes to the central office where it connects to all the other houses and this metal crossbar was the way it was like old school switching how you connect dan's house to aj's house physically with copper connections in the central office so that your two houses can connect and talk to each other and that was khloe designed all that non-blocking redundant switching architecture based on physical metal bars so anyway this is just some of the stuff that i'm learning just now in this job like i have to learn fabric well who's khloe and what's this and telecom and so my first job was a frame attendant in a central office where metal crossbars were used that this guy closed said well you know let's how are we going to scale this so but that was my first job and it was for like 11 bucks an hour um i i should probably level set us right so you have somebody like aj who like went to school for computer science and got expected jobs that a computer science guy would get i mean we did the old school episode remember like our crappy jobs and but before you know but but once you got that degree aj it seemed like a path right like you got tech jobs and i mean tim right you were like a computer science major give or take and you not a very good one what hey what are they called doctors that pass with seeds they are still doctors i think the reason that i resonated so heavily with with lexi's story was because i had a complete life career reboot at like 32. so you know i was like 32 and i had no money a ton of debt no real job like i went to school and i got some jobs in sales and marketing and they didn't work out and a couple personal issues i had just i was 32 years old and i just had to completely reboot my life um i did move home for a year lex like you mentioned that too so like when you were telling that story it really hit home so the reason i mentioned that aj is because you know that was 15 years ago right now everybody knows how old i am great but in 15 years i went to haddad in 15 years though i went from a guy with no money a ton of debt and just having you know not really i wasn't succeeding right like i wasn't the guy you wanted your daughter to marry and and well whatever pick a metaphor right but i just did you did your father-in-law tell you that no i wasn't winning right but sounds like you got some stories behind that one but you know i say that to say that i can't believe i always assumed that like when i saw successful people in life they always were and like oh well you know they grew up in a good family and they got a good education and they got this good job and that's why they're in tech and like they're and through the show we've really learned that there are a hundred different you know a thousand different ways to get there but yeah i feel like when you start from zero at 32 for me it means even more because i can't believe where my life and career has come since then because that was the darkest time of my life and this is the best time of my life and it's just been such a such a crazy wild ride i mean i was making six bucks an hour cut lunch meat at a supermarket you know right around just because i needed a job and i you know like and now here i am just at a dream job doing dream things making dream money and i just pinch myself every day like how did this all happen you know so just for some context like at 32 i legit had nothing career-wise financially life like things weren't going good for andy you know my starting point was at zero right it it wasn't uh it's been a long hard climb i think to get to where i am so i think that context is important because without it it's hard to really get a sense of how excited and grateful i am for this life because this was all out of my reach you know when by the time you're 32 you're supposed to have your shit together right like you know you want to see that is a myth it is a lot you know but you believe it i did like what am i doing real quick oh yeah everybody i grew up with you know they went to college they got married they got houses they had good careers and i'm like why isn't this happening for me like what am i doing wrong you know well i'll say i've uh i turned 32 this weekend so i don't have much time left to get my shit together dan is on the clock it's like oh shit but that's exactly my point like i know what you do for a living and you're killing it and deploying aci and you know and at 32 i had nothing and it was my own doing and some personal problems but like dude you just you're just killing it so so so anyway that was my first job that was a long way to get there damn it my first job was at a central office pulling wires from one crossbar to another crossbar so that somebody that moved into a house could you know you call the phone company you get a phone number and they have to actually physically connect you at the switch yeah yeah i got you for 11 bucks an hour so so so what what i was getting at is uh you started at you know a frame attendant or okay a frame attendant and uh now you're a product manager right yes and then your title product manager for uh juniper so it's like that's crazy cloud ready data center so all the data center stuff it's it's so cool and and what i really love about the the the culture too is i was hired as a product manager but a big part of the reason i think i was brought in was because of my recent end user experience like as someone who has been consuming these products for about eight years and prod um my experience and my opinions have value to people who are you know creating products and just making decisions on features and what do we want to do how do we want to do it you know even the other day we're we're talking about this really cool piece of software i'm excited about and i find myself sitting there in my head poking holes in it so like even in my head i'm like well because we've all been there right you're sitting in the room the vendor comes in yeah we're gonna make all your you know your dreams come true let me wave my little you know a lot of times they don't right and or it doesn't oh yeah right so as i'm sitting they just don't deliver it as it was you know as they as they sold it yeah and that kind of thing right so as i'm sitting there talking about this product learning it seeing it i think it's really valuable that i've been on the other side of that table as the engineer because i'm telling them like well listen if i was sitting there and you're telling this stuff to me here's the first three things i'm going to throw at you you know i'm going to i'm starting to shoot some errors across the table like well because i know i'm going to be responsible for this darn thing and prod you know and i see some issues right potential issues so um i think that bringing technical people who've done the job into a vendor to help make the products better it makes a lot of sense to me and i was kind of surprised to hear that in general i don't think that's like a really big thing like i don't know if there's a ton of network engineers working on the network platforms that you know at vendors i know they are a juniper because i'm surrounded by them but yeah that does surprise me you know i don't you know it's i and and again i'm so new i don't know anything right but i guess it would be really easy to pay gartner a million dollars for them to tell you what the market wants and needs and then you just go develop it without ever talking to an engineer or network person right like i mean you ask yourself you could do that yeah i mean that's like like customers yeah that's actually usually right that's why these people get paid so much we'll go out we'll find out what the customers want give us a million dollars we'll come back let you know and you go build it so anyway um but not everybody has an angel but i do joking aside there's to your point andy there's incredible value there because they can bring you in to product meetings give you pitches on things and and you can do what you said you can ask all the questions you can shoot holes through it that the customers are gonna do and they get that from internal to the organization so they can tweak a lot of that before they even put it in front of customers and they do it better yeah it's only gonna make them in the product better it's incredibly valuable which which i think is pretty smart and we're and we're gonna talk about them but the the gentleman who brought me in mike bushong this is his jam he's he has been building this team for years and bringing in lots of different smart people into his organization because and his results speak for themselves he's been doing really well bringing in lots of different smart people and putting them all together and having them collaborate like i've never again i haven't been there long but just the the synergy of like all these smart people with all these different like varied backgrounds and skill sets that are all kind of working on the same thing it just and maybe because i've been siloed for so long like you said dan like for years i was just a wand guy working on a win team you know we barely talked to the land guys and like i'm just used to being so focused on a narrow area and going deep in it that now it's it's it's so wide and big and you know they're telling me like listen if you see something like keep meeting people and if somebody's working on something that you're interested in help out chip in get in there let it it's not just like hey these are the three products that we're responsible for and this is all you're gonna do and you need a hyper focus it's this really nice broad you know how that's a sign of a good place to be they're encouraging you to learn whatever you're interested in yeah i've never experienced anything like it it's it's very you were told this is what you're going to learn now at least in the past this this is what we need right and uh so you know i don't know if i want to tell you i don't know when i want to tell you the discussion i had with this guy mike hey a1 fans aj here for an ally you ever heard of netally sure you have they came from the same group of engineers that brought us network tools from fluke networks netscout and now they're netaly 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 that ally is here to help net ally simplicity visibility collaboration visit netally.com today now back to the show well well let's let's go back let's go back a little bit first before we get into this so i'm thinking you know you were we were working at your old job and if you followed along with the podcast everybody was kind of aware that you know you used to work in fintech you were a network engineer you focused more on wayne and data center bring up circuits doing maintenance the whole nine and so what was it that kind of triggered you to say okay i think i've had enough here maybe it's time to look for a new opportunity yeah because and i ask you that only to say like i think a lot of people want to know like what what was it that caused you to decide like hey i'm working at this great place i i you know make decent money i get good benefits like what what is the tipping point that causes somebody to say i need to look for something else and so i'm curious what was that for for you because it's going to be different for everybody it's a really good question um do you want me to tell you because i know well so it gets kind of deep right because again going back to the 32 year old guy who just had no clue how to live as an adult like i've always had this sense of like every accomplishment that i had was somehow a mistake and that it was maybe gonna go away at any moment it's basically the definition of imposter syndrome in one sense or another like my my accomplishments weren't earned i somehow got lucky and someday it's all going to go away now right so i i share that to say that you know i can stay in a not ideal situation for a long time and longer than i probably should because there's a core belief which i'm working on which is that you know this is the last job i'll ever get or i couldn't possibly do better or you know that kind of stuff so you know i probably should have moved on earlier um cove had made it kind of confusing because when coveted hit our lives got a lot harder when the kids came home and the workload didn't abate so for somewhere between a year a year and a half all the suffering i felt i was under i was kind of blaming on covid like well the kids are home and i'm under this enormous workload and you know once the once the kids go back what i kept telling myself is once the kids go back to school i'll finally stop feeling like i had a physical pain in my body every day when i'd start work oh my god and that's just right like i it i wound up with health problems like from the amount of stress that i was under i had never had a migraine in my life and i got a month-long migraine during the whole covenant crazy like yeah dude it was awful and i went i had to get brain scans and medicine like i just could not you know if you've ever had a headache it's like 10 times worse and it lasted for a month so like wow so honestly that once i was able to get out of that and and consequently now i'm prone to migraines like i had never had one until my 40s and now it's like a thing i got to watch my stress and exercise and watch what eat all that so like so here i am right like i i work myself so hard and stressed myself out so much that now i have a new health thing that i got to manage right so you know there's there's not worth it right like you learned that lesson yeah so i've also been there you know i got the job when i got the job at comcast as a cable guy it was a really big deal for me and it was more money and i saw a career progression and we've talked about that before i maxed out and blah blah blah and then i got to the point where i'm like i'm beating up my body i'm not making enough you know i had just met my wife at the time and i'm like i got to get my act together like she's got a good education a good career and like i'm climbing ladders risking my life every day for 50 grand a year which is nothing to sneeze at but like it wasn't enough for what i was going through like every day everybody you talked to hating you because of the company you worked at like just you know it's death of a thousand cuts right so like when when i got my ccna and got a job at the knock i was like all right this is great but it wasn't for a ton more money you know it was i think it was like another 10 grand a year which was nice but it was super stressful yeah and you know the sky is falling all the time at a knock and you know we were national and you were working overnight too i started on mids i couldn't sleep for a year yeah that was awful like so you know but again like well i can't go back to being a cable guy i got to make this work blah blah blah so you know when i got the fintech offer and and i'll tell you this like i have somehow doubled my income twice in eight years now i haven't met anybody yet that has said something like that to me like so i'm not saying i have it figured out or there's some kind of secret to like doing that but when i went from comcast to fintech i doubled my income and that was huge but nice it was very very risky because comcast is one of those places you can work for the rest of your life you'll never get fired it's stable oh sure huge company you get free you get free cable which i like to remind you every five minutes like you know well that's working well don't fall off that ladder because you won't have free internet anymore i got hurt so so here's why did i leave fintech for for where i'm at now the reason i left the field and got my ccna was because i got hurt and i wound up in worker's comp yeah and the company doctor told me i better learn how to do my job with one hand because he was saying yeah i remember that i climbed ladders in traffic with 50 pounds of gear on me osha requires three points of contact with ladders when you're climbing and he told me you better learn how to do your job with one hand so that was a that was a pivot moment for me in life like huh they don't care about me i'm just a number i need to make a change so fast forward ccna knock um a little bit more money but not that much but the opportunity i went i went on vacation and the opportunity like a guy at linkedin a recruiter hit me up like hey you know fintech blah blah blah and we we talked and like oh my god this you know i can go from like break fix to build that's huge and i wasn't a computer science major and i wasn't a genius with a ccie like somebody had to take a chance on me and this guy did so i've been very lucky um but fintech was great because again aj like you know i still felt like this cable guy who got lucky getting in the knock now i killed myself for two years getting my ccna but somehow or another i convinced myself right like oh well you know i i i don't belong here i've been in impostor my whole life right like yeah you fast forwarded very quickly over like oh blah blah blah i got my cc like that's sneezing at that what are you talking about but but the reason i'm harping on this imposter syndrome and not feeling good enough for better things and all that is because when we do fast forward to this conversation i had with my current triple skip level bike he basically destroyed for the first time in my life he destroyed imposter syndrome for me and i don't think it'll ever come back and it's based on a book i'm going to share with you and i'd like to give a couple of them away when we release this to to a couple people because it just completely changed my view of myself and the world and like what's possible but anyway fintech was great because it was a ton more money and a ton more responsibility and now i'm a real network engineer building and maintaining infrastructure i'm not just looking at spectrum opening tickets you know um yeah yeah but it was i feel like it was like a big peg gap right like you know you were from the knock and then you went to your fintech job and you're doing all kinds of land stuff and and you know i i i feel like it was a it was a boost in the actual technical part of your of your chops big time my first job they gave me i had to add a static nat to a router i had no idea like what how the hell do i do that you know awesome to a bank that's like production like but it was also scary relax because like i had never done it the ccna taught me what nat was but no i'm with you it sounds terrifying for the first time yeah right but you know that's what you got to go through right so anyway fintech we're doing stuff with frame relay too like converting frame relay yeah really yeah yeah to convert a bunch of frame releases to mpls and again because i was new and i didn't understand the technology like people have to take a chance on you when you're new but you're gonna break stuff and i broke a big client it was a big deal and because i didn't understand tunnel timers and overwriting existing policies and blah blah blah i didn't know you could break something and have it take 24 hours to actually break because of the 24-hour tunnel time you know you learn you know there's all kinds of lamb sleepers yeah but anyway fintech was a dream job we just bought a house that got married we had a six-month-old son and all of a sudden i'm now making enough money that like we could put him in the nicer daycare and like you know we can start putting money away for his college so it was like life-changing job life-changing money and that was great fast-forward a couple years you know i'm working a lot of maintenance windows we were a small team so i'm on call every third week stuff's always breaking so i'm always getting called at night i work 23 sunday maintenance windows that one year i remember telling you guys at one point we can only work sunday so i work 23 sundays and we're talking like four hour windows like 11 p to like four or five a oh brutal i'm my brain is mush for like at least a day i'm guessing you were salaried and you weren't compensated for that totally salary no i mean you know i work something out i got some comp time right like if you work four hours on sunday you can take it off another day and sure i mean we work something out right but yeah but that was my idea it wasn't my managers i was like hey can we do something here he's okay yeah sure that you know my buddy forda jeff gave me that idea because he was doing it at sunguard but but in any case you know the comcast stuff was great the knock was great fintech was great because they were big steps up um but all the maintenance windows and and then they said well you know it doesn't have to be sundays anymore we can work during the week well that sounded good but then i was working two or three nights a week on top of working you know all day and super busy we had a big merger which meant we had all these new technologies to learn and roll out and so it was a lot of stress for not any more money really and then covet hit and my health issue manifested and i think we talked about in the mental health episode i i i was you know i was not the father husband friend son i wanted to be when cove had hit because i was tired and my head hurt and i was stressed out at work and the kids are in here every five minutes you know how are you supposed to do network engineering being interrupted every five minutes i read i read cal newport's deep work knowledge workers need extended periods of uninterrupted concentration to to work on and solve problems and create solutions every 10 minutes somebody was in here so so anyway um you know why did i wind up leaving fintech i was burnt out and i was having health issues and there didn't seem you know in any way out of that um it wasn't it wasn't a temporary thing right like it it maybe was pitched that way in the beginning like oh we just got to get through this and once everything's you know once everything's all merged we'll go back to like normal life and normal life never came back or was it even pitched that way yeah and maybe they didn't even mean for it to be there right yeah who knows yeah and i never want to be in a position where i'm talking bad on the next employer right so like they have they have a job to do and they have here well right but like they have a job to do they have shareholders they have a stock price they have a board right like sure of course they all have a job that's different than my job and i think the most one of the harder parts was senior leadership would say one thing we're all in this together we don't want you to work yourself to death we don't want you to be a hero but then my boss is handing me more and more and more and more work so to me it seemed like there was a disconnect like okay you don't want me to be a hero but i'm drowning and you're just throwing more on top of me so again it just starts to make you feel a certain kind of way about the culture you're in like is that all just lip service on stage so people can go rah-rah but then the day-to-day soldier on the front line he's just getting hammered and it doesn't really seem like they feel their actions don't align with their words right that's basically yeah what i'm trying to have their own job and i get it right like it's not a judgment i'm not saying they're bad people but their job and leadership is different than my job and the more they give me the more we can do the more successful the company is right the happier the clients are like it's it's a weird dynamic in companies and cultures yeah how do you treat your people well but still be super productive and get stuff done like right i don't know you know well it kind of you know what bothers me about that is the company is kind of because i've seen that before too uh the company's feels to me like putting the burden of like relax chill out you know on the employee when like you're not being given the tools and resources to be able to do that or they're just taking away those tools and resources but taking away your time and your mental energy i don't like that when a company doesn't you know when they companies should allow for that time for you if they want you to relax right they want you to actually be in a good mental space don't sit there and say take five minutes to meditate every day and then like not give their employees five minutes i could go on a whole rant about that but yeah yeah totally basically like you you block out your your calendar and then they're like oh but well we need to push that out because we have to have this meeting or you know that kind of this was the job that i was always triple booked oh my gosh i got you like and everybody was you said repeatedly was always one of those places where like everything's a priority and if everything's a priority nothing's a priority yeah how do you even handle that like if you're actually triple booked what do you what do you do are you doing like two maintenances at once so you do and then like talking to someone that's a good question right i mean i don't know it sucks yeah it's i mean that's culture right and that's there were good people and i liked them all and you know i'd happily barbecue for them and have them at my house for a pool party or something but the culture i was in was just untenable so i think that's what you know the migraine when when my health issues manifested from all the stress i was under once i got out of that uh migraine cycle thing i was in i remember thinking like i can't i can't do this anymore like this what am i doing right because that voice in my head is like this is the only job you're gonna have you and listen i had interviewed right like i don't know if i was overpaid for my experience because i had a bunch of interviews and nobody could really give me enough to jump every place i talked to you know in my mind i'm like tough yeah in my mind i'm like i'm gonna need 20 to jump because i don't have to leave and i have a job and i have a bunch of comp time yeah it's rough but and you know and i don't know if 20 is going to make me happier but you know let me let me try something else out right like i need a change this is hard and i couldn't get anybody to give me even enough money to to like jump so um i started to look at tme positions because i love content creation with with this team and uh this guy on twitter wes kennedy i had wound up talking to and he jumped on the phone with me and he started to tell me about the tme role you finished that yeah for the people listening what is a tme sorry technical marketing engineer so my understanding is they basically create all kinds of content for tech companies right like there's if if you look at the like i just saw it the other day if you look at like whatever that juniper junos jncaa day one guide is that like you get if you go on juniper learning um the the the woman yasmine lara we know like she her name is on there so like it's somebody who helped create this document that learners use to like learn junos and right i know they do like manchester united you know whatever it is like white papers podcasts instructional videos yeah yeah some of them work for like plural site right like they'll be content creators for sure sure you know no they'll go to you know industry conferences and present the product there they'll go to tech field day right stuff like all those tech field days and nfds you've been to right they're mostly tmes that present right they're very pensive as well all of them so because i love content creation with y'all i was like oh wow this would be great you know and i started pursuing that and so i i i have to bring this up now that now that we've made it through this now that you've made it through that process and you are where you are you were going through the job hunting process and you were looking at these tme jobs and you for some reason you you didn't want to share with us that you were applying to all these tme jobs because you felt like we were your competition and i think i can safely say for everybody like if if we know where you're applying we're not going to go apply to where you're applying and try to steal something out from under you it just you know it says yeah chance that's you what are we some kind of jerks yeah i'm pretty sure i told aj a place i applied to and he applied like two days later and was like oh yeah i talked to someone song like oh geez i remember hearing this you know but no i mean right listen there's enough i mean we talked about it with the with the inclusion episodes and conversations like there's enough room at the table for for everybody yeah but when i talked to wes and found out what they do and the kind of living they make i'm like holy crap like i can't tell anybody about this until i land this job because you know if i do like in my mind you know aj's more technically skilled than i am and he's got computer science and coding and 8 200 certs like if if it's me and aj you know for that decision i'm like well god i you know i can't have more competition here i don't i don't need to compete with aj's i only have 10 or 12 starts but i was trying to i was trying to play it you know close whatever they say like tight to the vest or whatever yeah yeah i really wanted and needed that job and i'm like man let me land this before so so anyway yeah that was thanks for bringing that up age i appreciate it there's we'll see now there's no shit like aj didn't swoop in and steal your job so i think that would have been that would have been really good dynamic for the team here it would be a bit of a different show i think we just need like a dibs system that's it you know just post your job wreck and then be like dibs whoever says it first and that's it there you go i like it well you know it's interesting i had i had a six interview process with a particular vendor for a tme spot and and i didn't get it yeah six interviews yeah is that normal can we just sorry but i feel like it is now i've never now that i've hear yeah i mean i've heard all these people like i've had four interviews for this and i only had one hang on real quick i'm really sorry to sidetrack but like can we define interview because i feel like some people talk about an interview as like okay each time i talk to one person for however long that's an interview versus like a block of time when you're talking to people is that one interview you know like what right what are we talking about yeah andy was that six different interviews or is it six different people at one block at a time now we're about to get this no i'm sorry i'm not trying to invalidate i'm trying to figure out but i'm so i wanna i wanna give you an honest answer i think it was six different people six different times yeah oh okay wow yeah yeah that's because i consider that it was in the world and it was in a week they were like we have to make our decision by friday all candidates have to be in so like i'm working yeah you know you know take a lunch here lunch there like i tried to make it work and i'm gonna sit on the seventh day yeah i'm working to make that all right i'm working a maintenance window tonight maybe i'll take an extra hour today for this thing so but but the reason i just want to go off on a tangent for a second because this is this is one thing that really this really grinds my gears right like oh god you're you're trying to better yourself you're trying to move on and i get that it's hard to like you know talk to your employer about that but why is it hard to talk to your employer about that like do you know how many times like oh uh i i'm gonna be late for work i gotta take my son to a doctor's appointment so i'm not i'm just and then oh i gotta go pick my son up early because he needs a follow-up and it's just like you know at one point like my boss is just like are your kids okay because you you you how many sons how many sons do you have yeah you know and so it's just frustrating that we have to go through all this like hiding and lying and then and then like you know sooner or later your boss is probably picking up what you're throwing down like when you finally go go to them and say hey i'm giving my notice i'm like oh geez i thought you were just going to a lot of doctor's appointments i didn't realize you were you know job hunting we we were going to send flowers we didn't know if they were okay well i really wanted that tme spot but what's interesting is i heard a lot of red flags in those six interviews of things that were happening at my fintech spot that i was like oh man this is yeah do you tell spelling it's just you know you hear things you know uh it just sounded like it was a similar environment of you know too much work and not enough people you know like yeah like the one the one manager is like yeah i really i really work hard to try not to burn my people out but it's really tough sometimes like whoa and i think we're done yeah right right so so anyway i wanted a tme role west put me in touch with his network of people now i i should so i should back up and say that this guy uh sean uh legan who's on my team he had posted on twitter this all happened through twitter by the way so back to the branding and like social media yeah twitter twitter's the new linkedin best thing you can do for your career who knew right i just you shit birds here we go you can do whatever you want on twitter get a job whatever so sean had posted like however many months ago about it was a long thread about how he pivoted from network engineering to vendor life and he shared a bunch of input like you know about how great it's been and blah blah blah and then he posted a couple job openings at juniper and he said you know hey my dms are open if you have any questions you know job posting barely tells the whole story let me know so i started talking to him let me hop on the phone and this is what like blows me away about the networking community like this guy wes who is a stranger we hop on the phone talk for an hour and he's like listen i'm going to put you in touch with my network of people i want to help you and then all those people jumped on the phone and but you know so even i'm talking to sean i'm sorry wes kennedy is a tme uh he just took a job at nvidia um but he's you know it's just a guy on twitter right that i think i had asked one day like hey any tmes out there like i need to talk and you know he reached out hopped on the phone and was like here's all my people man like i think you'd be great hang on i gotta pause the show i gotta go hit twitter real quick and just yes hold on i gotta be i gotta beat aj but i talked to sean sean sean put out there right it's all about like putting yourself out there i guess and he put out there like here's what i did it's been amazing reach out we have openings i talked to him he's like yeah put your application and let me know i didn't hear anything so then a month or two later i talked to wes west puts me in touch with his network one of the guys was this one guy matt who i was gonna talk to about a tme turns out matt left juniper so i can't talk to him anymore there's this other guy matt oswalt who was a juniper and i talked to him and i think a day or two later i somehow got in touch with mike bushong so i credit matt oswell i mean sean made me aware of the position and got an application in matt as soon as i talked to matt he was like all right let me talk to somebody you'll be hearing from somebody and like three days later i'm on the phone with mike bushong who's again this you know very senior very successful very intelligent uh guy who just you know blew me away so i get on the phone with mike we you know we're talking to dms on twitter and he's like listen let's just hop on the phone and talk this isn't an interview let's get to know each other let me tell you what i'm thinking and we'll see how it goes so you know we're talking and he's he says something to the effect of like yeah you know like russ white is under me and like i'm like whoa wait a minute like the the russ white like doctor like i think he's written all these cisco press but you know i know russ from network collective right but like he's a brilliant guy who's every time on network collective they talk about a protocol russ would be like what do you want to know i could tell you anything like the guy i think he wrote protocols or something but anyway when he tells me that like you know people like russ white are on his team i'm like mike again my imposter syndrome i'm like just so you know like i'm no russ white man like i mean i understand networking and i can make stuff work but like i don't want you to think that you're getting a genius here and what he said next honestly i think changed the course of the rest of my life because it changed how i view my strengths and weaknesses and my imposter syndrome has always been fueled by me focusing on my weaknesses and corporate cult like we focus on weaknesses right like areas of opportunity like they find out what you're not good at work and then they send you a bunch of classes to try to focus on crap you're not good at so that you can try to get better at stuff you're not good at like so there's this book i'll tell you about and i'm probably not giving it justice but anyway he tells me listen andy you he said something like your level of confidence is incongruent with what i know about you you're you're putting yourself down on this call they're not matching up i know of you i know you and you're putting yourself down on this call he said whether you wherever you end up working even if it's not a juniper i want you to hear something he said we're all we all have a handful of things we're good at they're our strengths and there's a book called now know your strengths um and the book is all about how it was this guy in the 70s don clifton who was a psychologist strengths-based psychology and his whole thing and again i won't do it justice but you know by focusing what they did was they went around and they talked to and interviewed all the most successful you know surgeons and fighter pilots and professional athletes and all you know software like whatever ceos cts whatever they talk to the most successful people on the planet and tried to find a common thread what every single one of them said was that they focus on their strengths they found out what they were good at that's what they put their energy into and they excelled which is opposite of usually what we're taught so what mike said is you know the context of where you are is an important what is important is you're very good at a handful of things you can take that anywhere any company and succeed like okay i've never heard that before you're you're smart i guess that's true so so anyway we you know we we talk and and and the rest is kind of history right like he's like great i think he'd be a great fit let me put you in touch with you know my director who put me in touch with the manager and you know long and short of it they offered me this job but but i went and bought this book and in the book there's this assessment you can take online and i took this assessment and it gives you like your five core strengths like things that and they're obvious to me now but all of a sudden i'm like oh the things that i'm naturally good at are why mike is bringing me in it's he's not looking for russ white like my whole tech career in my mind has been like i don't have enough certs i'm not smart enough i need my ccmp i need my ccie like i need to be able to answer all these questions now i got to learn animation like it's always been this never ending climb of like i need to learn all this stuff so i can get to the mountaintop right and he just kind of flipped all that he's like no no that's not what highly you know it's not what very successful people in in business and sports and you know that's not what they do so anyway uh the book totally changed my outlook on myself and i've been focusing on my strengths ever since we talked what what are what are some of your strengths andy yeah yeah i like it so so one of them i'll just you know it's here and i won't bore you with all the details but one of them is empathy right from the time i've been a kid i can feel other people like what other people are feeling i know it sounds woo-woo and crazy but like i can remember in sixth grade going down to the city with my mom we went to the art museum and i cried for two days because i didn't understand why the homeless people didn't have anywhere to go and why we couldn't bring them home and help them like ever since i've been a kid if somebody's in pain i can feel it if if my wife is mad i feel it like so how am i grateful oh no no that's but you know i have my best friend zach he's a sociopath he doesn't feel anything anybody feels like now it makes him a really good cop you just called him out oh he knows he knows everybody who knows zach knows he's associated with but he's aware but he he he's the perfect cop he can go do that job and see the worst of the world we who can do those kind of jobs right like if i was a cop hang on you're talking about like like experiencing like the bad things and like not maybe in taking so much trauma not internalizing being a horrible person or something like no thanks if you're an empath you will feel and absorb all the awfulness of the world if you have that kind of awful job you carry why most cops are alcoholics and kill them there's a lot of suicide and drug and alcohol because unless you're a sociopath you internalize all that you bring it all home and then you project it onto your own wife and kids and like oh my god what terrible thing's going to happen to my loved ones someday and i grew up in a family of cops so i can talk about this and not be totally clueless and an idiot so in any case empathy is one of them how is that helpful well i've been a network engineer i know that pain now i'm gonna be at a vendor and i can be on the other side of the table and because i know the pain on the other side or maybe i'm at an nfd aj and somebody you know i'm i'm helping with the presentation right and when somebody says something across the table like i feel you bro like i yeah you've been there i know what you're saying not only from experience but like yeah i'm i'm in the room with you i i feel what you're putting down like i won't take it as an attack because i'm an evil vendor and you're whatever like right i get what you're saying so anyway empathy is one of them and they have all these different terms for them i love to solve problems uh there's a there's a term for that it makes for a good network engineer and now i'm you know with a vendor solving problems um i love to learn i have an insatiable curiosity i always have that's apparently useful and helpful in tech in different roles you know what i mean i think we're all curious right you got to go google and figure it out so sure um you know i don't know if any of this has been entertaining for anybody listening but that's kind of been my my story of you know why did i leave fintech i had to i'm pretty sure i was i was if i stayed i think it was gonna start like shortening my lifespan and it wasn't that company it wasn't that company right but it was just the culture i was in and what was happening in the world and circumstances presented themselves that you know auto macho that we had on loves it there he's thrilled he's you know and we're just in different uh parts of our life hey a1 fans aj here to remind you about nordvpn.com nordvpn will help secure you wherever you go i use nordvpn on all my personal devices whenever i'm out about i just go into the nordvpn app hit quick connect and away i go nice and secure don't have to worry about prying eyes anybody looking at my connection if i choose to go work from a coffee shop locally or you know even while i'm traveling if i bring my personal device devices i will use the workvpn to help keep things safe and secure i'm using nordvpn right now and there's no degradation in my signal everything looks good when you guys watch us on the live streams so i can't say enough good things about nordvpn they have some great additional services included with their vpn product they'll scour the dark web for your credentials and see if they've been involved in any sort of hacks or anything and then if they have they'll let you know and you can go change your passwords and do whatever you need to do to help keep yourself safe and secure they also have a mode that will block any websites or ads known to possess malware and they just have general ad blocking anyway because you know who wants ads uh as i record an ad anyway if you want nordvpn and you do go to nordvpn.com forward slash t-a-o-n-e for the art of network engineering and you can get a really great deal 73 percent off two years plus four months free so again that's 73 off two years plus four months free of nordvpn if you forget that url just go to nordvpn.com at checkout you can use the promo code t-a-o-n-e for the art of network engineering and we appreciate your support as well as nordvpn support of the art of network engineering podcast now back to the show yeah so that's one thing i wanted to bring up was earlier when you were talking about the the you know the late night windows and or maintenance windows and that kind of stuff is you know for me my you know i wouldn't enjoy that now but i think my younger self would you know because my younger self didn't have a wife or a kid or you know you know i was just doing my own thing and so i feel like and i also compare this with other jobs too look at like people who are implementation engineers that travel all the time that they're gone every single week they're traveling around not so much anymore i mean aj i was gonna say you don't travel as much anymore though but but there's people out there that like literally their job is to go install a rack of equipment and then they go to another place and install a rack of equipment and and um i've talked to a few of these people right you know because they were installing a rack of equipment in our place but uh they're younger they don't have families and stuff that's in it you know looking back on mine on my career i think i would have enjoyed that at a time yeah to where if i was going to these different places i could i'm a big uh you know foodie kind of guy so like if i could eat food at these different uh you know these different cultures and and different areas and whatnot i think that would be really cool but me now i would not want to do that you know i don't want to be away from my kid you know i don't want to be away from my wife that kind of thing um so i was i was wanting to i wanted to bring that up to make a point that just because it didn't work for you that doesn't mean that maybe someone else might not like that and i'm glad you said that anamacho you know he's thrilled he loves that kind of work uh so it's just a different a different way to look at it right and there's different life like you know life periods we go through right like he's he's young he's not married he doesn't have any kids and not to say that but it's easier to to do those nights and and to be grounded yeah and listen he's just being younger you have more energy right like you know right so well it you know like kids i don't understand you could send them to bed at like 11 o'clock at night and they're going to be up at 5 30 in the morning and like freaking ready to roll and and you know if you have to be up till four or five in the morning doing a window and then you gotta turn around and get kids ready and everything like that like yeah no that's that's rough it's not a long game yeah exactly and so um i i don't know i i i wanted to say that earlier but you were yeah you were moving pretty good so i didn't want to interrupt yeah it's it's a really point andy i want to talk to the industry so did you have a pretty good idea that your next jump was gonna be to a vendor or was it you knew or had a high level idea of the role you wanted to get into and that's kind of what pushed you toward wanting to work for a vendor so no i didn't know is going to a vendor but you remind me of something else i wanted to bring up that every big jump i've made in my career has been a risky huge leap of faith um okay there's no guarantee that i'm gonna succeed where i'm at here right um when i left comcast for fintech i had no idea i broke something big like four months in their ceo golf with our ceo like i could have been fired if they didn't shield me which would have been really bad so my jump from comcast to fintech and my jump from fintech to juniper they've both included risk and a very you know i've i mean it's a calculated risk but i've never i don't know anything about product management right like i'm i'm reading books and trying like but they also they also didn't bring me in to be mr product manager that's my title but they really want a technical person who has integrity that's been a network engineer who can help them make better products right they they want to get more market share they want happier customers they want like so bringing people like us in i think helps that you know what i mean yeah well because you know the pain yeah intimately we all right like everybody on this page like panel i mean we all know that damn pain we've all hit that bug and i've i've complained about every vendor on the planet because of reasons right like oh yeah you gotta upgrade the entire fleet in a week because of some bug like oh my god why can't these people write good code why you know and apparently there's reasons and what i'm learning about in this scrum book and agile and scrum versus waterfall is like if you go with waterfall and take five years to build software by the time you're done people aren't going to want it or need it and but with this agile kind of scrum mentality it's like just get it out and iterate you know let's get at a usable product and then get feed well i know but as a user of it dan it sucks but that's how the entire modern world toyota started doing this in the 70s they all stole it from toyota and they're the most successful yeah they're the most successful car company because they do this like scrum methodology which is it's fascinating it's this audiobook i'm listening to my boss turned me on too but yeah tim i didn't know i was going to a vendor when i was looking at tme roles vendors primarily hire them you know so i thought i was what happened i'm sorry i was reading the chat so andy andy before you answer my first question i want to ask you another one sorry squirrel moment completely i thought i answered your first question did i not i meant to no you did you did i think you had another thought but you did answer it so let me cut you off um i obviously don't want you to get into the math of it but you talked about taking multiple jumps and taking risks and that it was they were all calculated risks at a high level how do you how do you calculate that risk reward okay like anything you know pros and cons list yeah like in the thick of it what were you i just told you i don't want you to get into the math of it but like are you are you just thinking through things in your head are you actually jotting things down are you assigning values to things am i am i overthinking it what is it yeah you're not overthinking it i don't think i wrote anything down i'm the kind of person that if i'm going to spend 50 bucks on amazon i'm going to spend an hour researching like well i don't want to get a crappy thing that's going to break let me look at reviews but then some reviews they pay people for reviews so that's crap so then let me look at consumer reports let me ask around like i i spend way too much time researching and trying to make an informed decision so you know if i can't spend 50 bucks on amazon without an hour of mental torture like you know for my career i'm gonna it's just who i am right um i want as much data as i can to you know i don't want to lose my job and be out of work with a wife and kids and mortgage and college funds and like but at the same time fortune favors the bold like if you take risks in life my experience has been if you can take a calculated risk so far it's been working out right like i i have no complaints if i was stuck in imposter syndrome and stayed as a cable guy because i can never do better than this i'm not good enough to do anything else if i listen to my colleagues in cable who said the ccna is a waste of time you'll never do anything with it which they said if i listened to all that and stayed there and didn't take a risk you know i'd still be making you know i'd be up to maybe 60 grand a year now and you know beating my body up again wondering what all you could have done in those years i never would have met you fine people you know what i mean so yeah you know it i mean how does anybody i guess we all have different risk aversions right like i mean i jumped out of a perfectly good plane tim so like i don't know if i'm the best guy to and he had a ponytail on at the same time so that tells you a little bit more about where you know i i so before i was married with kids i mean i feel most alive when i'm taking a risk right it's i mean i ski i'm one of those kind of guys like dan we were talking earlier like i don't know if it was us or i was talking to somebody at work but like i ski the double black diamonds i ski the steepest most dangerous hills because to me that's ex wait you actually do that i gotta see this i haven't scanned since i was i thought you were joking but i yeah i'll i'll go to blues that's about it so i you know i like adrenaline i guess and but you know you get older and you get responsibility and you try not to be an idiot anymore but part of me is excited to take part of me is excited about this risk tim because it kind of gets my juices flowing in a certain sense but it's a big step in my career i mean you know tickles is fancy you know what what if you could what if you could make a crap ton more money and get rid of maintenance windows and on call and never have to get another cert as long as you lived like how does that sound right now it's oversimplifying it and i'm talking to four network engineers who make their bread and butter by getting certifications learning all the things being on call and doing maintenance windows so it's not a it's not a probably a popular thing to say to this particular audience but for me who was burnt out on the job and i wasn't sure if it was the company or the damn job like i don't want to get another cert now right now i'm working on a cert so right like so you know what i mean i'm being totally transparent with you like i don't want another search i went the other way with that one yeah we're expecting that i'm using it as a learning plan now where before it's like well i have to get my ccmp to get a better job or i have to learn automation because i'm never going to be able to get out of here or before you felt like you had to now it's a choice right yeah yeah and that's and that's kind of nice um and you know one thing i don't want to leave out because i know we're getting at the end here we're probably over but during that time in my life when when you know i wasn't doing so good um somebody turned me on to this guy wayne dyer and he had this series called the power of intention and basically what his whole thing was you know he's like one of these guru dudes right like don't you know it's kind of woo-woo and you'll be like oh my god andy but he was a smart dude and he had this thing called the power of intention which was basically like you know you you can what do you intend to like do with your life like what it's it's not planning so much but it's pretty much staying open to like the possibilities right and like i i do it with my wife like she she's more like conservative minded and like you know we got to be safe and like stay in the thing and all and and i keep showing her like well i believe anything's possible and i always have and i think that that stops that glass ceiling from existing that like you know like it's even with salary negotiations i never in a million years thought i would ever make a hundred thousand dollars a year right and i did as a network engineer i never thought in a million years i'd be making what i'm making now when the guy asked me what i was looking to make because i have a sales background and i know how to negotiate i did not give him a number and this is a video i want to make because it's really helpful for people like us so i gave them my canned response which everybody accepts and then they start talking and when he started talking and set a number i blacked out like i have no idea what he said after that because the number he said just short circuited in my brain i might have had a mini stroke real quick like because again i believe anything's possible and my life keeps showing me that like if you don't place limits on yourself and you take some risk amazing things can happen so that's been what's been happening to me and if you don't believe in yourself no one will if you don't believe anything's possible you will put limits on yourself and and this is just me kind of just telling you what my life has been i'm not saying go read the power of intention and you know whatever but it made an impression on them you know like people give you stuff and it just somehow resonates with you for some reason and so like when this mike guy told me what he told me about strengths it destroyed imposter syndrome for the first time in my life and then when this person showed me this power of intention stuff which is free like just it's just a book he wrote i'm like whoa wait a minute like i can do you know when you're a kid they tell you it could be anything and then you go to college and you fail to computer science right like i mean that's that's what happened to me so i'm like well that's bullshit i can't be anything i want to be but as we've learned on the show there are many paths to the same destination so just because i failed at computer science doesn't mean i got to climb ladders the rest of my life i just got to hang in there keep plugging away take some calculated risks and believe that everything's going to be awesome i just got to keep doing the work pay attention and and you know just keep on keeping on so um you know i i think we all limit ourselves to a certain extent based on reasons and if you do that you know how how high can you get right like if if you're like me and you don't believe you know that there's anything better for you and you're an imposter and they made a mistake hiring you and like you're just lucky to have what you have you'll probably stay in a crappy situation forever i mean even relationships right you know people who are like why are they together you know i mean like what's wrong with them i mean part of it is like they probably don't think they can do any better like well you know he's not all that bad i mean you know he's nice thirty percent of the time and like oh my god like what are you doing you're awesome get out of there like calm down andy my wife might hear you don't limit yourself is all the point of all that rambling because we all do it to some extent and it will we're all going to be dead soon right we just have one life and it's short and it's your life as a result of the decisions you make so you got to stay open-minded i think to possibilities i mean look at lex she's working on freaking rockets like oh did you ever think that was going to happen i mean that's but that's crazy like it's amazing fuck no i didn't think that was never going to happen it's amazing no i thank you that's really sweet of you to say i uh no the one thing that's occurring to me as you're talking about this andy is i don't know who said this first or i don't have like a poignant quote but i just have heard this lately you know there's we're all afraid to fail i guess like that's a very common thing but a lot of people might actually unconsciously be afraid of what happens if they succeed right and that sounds kind of like hokey a little bit but it's true i i think that's something that has applied to me like you know i i won't go into it too far but like i've stared down the barrel of like something amazing and been like i don't deserve this this is not for me i can't do this and it's like but it's at they're asking they're giving it to you and it's like but i can't you know so you have to you know keep that in mind like don't be afraid what what's gonna happen if you succeed don't be afraid of it embrace it if it's the right time is the right time you know let it happen go for it do you want to hear a funny story you just reminded me of yeah so my sister's this gorgeous tall girl she could have been a ford model didn't want to blah blah blah and she was at an airport as a flight attendant and her and brad pitt start right and my mom's with her they were both flight attendants so my mom's telling me this story and brad pitt starts like you know giving my sister some time right and she and she blew him off and afterwards my mom was like what are you doing and my sister said no this is coming from my mom so i believe her she said that she could never be with a guy as attractive as brad pitt because she'd always be worried that you know he'd like be cheating you know like the whole world wants some and she couldn't but you talk about like a limiting belief right like maybe my sister could have at least dated brad pitt like why wouldn't you right i date the guy and i'm hetero but like he's beautiful right so i'm just saying that to say like you know you can really the possibilities are endless right and like you said you can look at this and be like it is scary right like yes believe that you're good enough for it like you just have to or you will fail you'll set yourself up to fail if you don't at least have you know that seed of belief in you i can do this it's self-fulfilling scary yeah if you don't believe in yourself nobody will and you will continue to bring the wrong people in your life and i mean right this isn't like a psychology class or whatever but well i mean we're touching on it and it's very valid but i mean i i have it right i have experience with that in my own life i mean you you attract what you put out there and you know so anyway yeah but it but it's an inside job right like with the mental health episode i mean i've been in therapy for a long time and a lot of that stuff really really helps me look at my patterns and what i'm doing and why and like and then change right it's it's really all about you know change i don't know anybody that's born perfect and just figures it all out knocks it out of the park with everything so like you know it's an inside job we're always kind of working on ourselves and you know none of this would have happened if i hadn't been working on myself for so long because i because i always believed that i wasn't good enough and that good things weren't for me and i kept attracting you know goofballs uh because i was a goofball so andy i gotta say it's like so you know at the beginning of this uh episode you you so you when you talked about how happy you are here like what you're doing now and like you know the smile on your face you're just like radiating you know you're you're very happy we can tell and like it's just i want to say i'm really so happy for you it is not a myth lex you joined at the right time because apparently these poor bastards were dealing with randy for like 20 months just this okay okay so randy and zandy yeah yeah you know it was it was good off my lawn there were memes about me they were going to make a t-shirt and i was a grumpy old man and you know apparently when you're and listen again i don't want to beat up on the last place i was at and covet had a big thing to do with it but you know it just it wasn't for me you know if if you're in a bad situation in life it could be your work it could be a relationship whatever i mean it's it's going to bleed into all aspects and and the podcast was the most fun i had had during that whole time but yeah i guess apologies to these guys and and the listeners that you know i wasn't my best self i was going through some shit and it was hard and you know i wasn't as uh i guess patient as i should have been i mean dan and i just fought every episode for like at least a year like you know wait wait that's that's stopped i hope so i was fighting i was hoping it'd continue yeah i'm sure it would see andy that's where that's where the apology doesn't need to exist because we were seriously concerned about you yeah i mean it's not like we were sitting here thinking oh this guy i can't believe you just keep were you guys planning an intervention have in bed well we've got the other group chat dan is very vocal in there i'll tell you what yeah yeah i want to see this no but but seriously andy it's and we've said it a hundred times now we've been able to see this transition and that's how we know that it's been yeah the right move on so many different levels it's not just professional right because you've felt like and i don't want you to dig up skeletons but i think you've even said that members of your family have even brought this up to you that hey you seem a little different yeah you know yeah it's been cool to see i can't tell you how many times my wife told me you need to get out of there i mean she has to live with me right we both work from home like the last place i mean probably for a year she's like you got to get out of there like what are you doing you know i don't know i'm doing my best i'm happy for you dude yeah thank you it's it's good what's going on the chat am i getting beat up are they like no no no no you're vendor evil uh they're talking about your hairline how beautiful i got a good hairline we're talking about it's called dapper andy andy just promise us something don't lose that soapbox completely all right i love it all right yeah and you're doing elbow drops off of it yeah i have stronger stunners oh my god you know for our meetup i think i should bring a soapbox oh i think you should just you know and then and then when we do our show you stand on that like just stand on the side of my soapbox for the episode i think it'll be great it's it's like a token ring right so you get the soapbox then aj gets the soapbox you know you can only talk if you're standing on the soapbox yeah well andy i want to thank you for peeling back the onion with us i know that it can be difficult to you know talk details about some of this stuff but uh i think you think you navigated the situation very well um and i i do believe that a lot of people listening to this are gonna connect with a lot of what you're saying about you know either the situation they're in now or a situation they've been in and give them some things to chew on and think about so again thank you very much for sharing all of this with us and i'll just echo what everybody else has already said it's it's nice to see you in a better place you know i think that you you shared some of what you were going through while you were going through it but i i do think that you're you were definitely carrying a lot of emotion that maybe you weren't even really aware of until now now that you can leave it behind so yeah it's a stark contrast yeah for sure it's it's amazing what you can endure and then when you get out from under the weight you're like wow yeah why why why did i do that for as long as i did right right you know well i'd also like to thank our patreons for hanging with us tonight as we always do whenever we record an episode if you're interested in joining the patreon program you can go to patreon.com and uh hang with us ask questions make fun of dan make fun of me you know that's all that all that kind of stuff goes on in the chat while we're having a good time recording and each and every week and sometimes on the weekends at last minute notice uh you never know when we're gonna pop up thanks lexi lex thank you for joining us this is amazing dance yes congratulations this is going to be a really exciting 2022 i know we can't talk about everything going on behind the scenes but there's some really cool stuff happening agreed yeah the year just started and we're starting with a bang this is uh this is great hell yeah i'm excited pretty excellent well i think that puts a bow on it thank you very much everybody for joining us thanks again andy for sharing your story and we'll see you back next week for another episode of the art of network engineering hey keep an eye out for the twitter poll to name dan's unborn child hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artoofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you