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 good morning folks tippertino with you here live in the aone traffic chopper we're hovering high above the 404 where the traffic policers definitely have their work cut out for them today we're seeing an abundance of one-way traffic on all northbound egress points and our southbound ingress points have been totally saturated this all seems to be linked to a local construction crew accidentally severing a major traffic backbone with a backhoe unfortunately that's leading to a massive degradation of services all day today the only vehicles we are seeing get in or out safely are ones that have been given an ef priority by their local authorities we'll check back in later today as the situation continues to develop this has been timbertino coming to you live above the 404 back to you aj in the aone studios the very appropriate well-timed intro from tim given the comcast outage today that was fantastic i can't wait until dan edits that in post and we hear the chopper sound you know i almost i almost started to do like but i didn't want to mess with dan's in post so i i just left it alone oh that's going to be good nice nice work tim nice work tim he is at timbertino i am uh aj murray at no blinky blinky tim how are you doing sir hey i'm good i gotta give credit that was another uh jordan masterpiece thank you jordan uh i am a little bit down about 10 minutes ago or so my son ran in here wearing his uh sheriff woody pajamas and dan wasn't here to give him a we'll howdy to time that again next time yeah yeah that was cute that was cute andy at andy laptop permit ipandyandy.com how are you sir man i'm great i know you're great and i can't wait for you to share why you're great i'm great and i can't tell anybody why well sure you can this one's not going to drop for like a month and a half yeah i'm good more to come yeah yeah more to come from andy yeah is there anything you can talk about uh specifically like how are you gonna put me on a spot bro like i think you got a basketball court today maybe you could talk about it okay yeah i we did we got a we got a basketball court in the driveway so so my my wife got a full ride on a basketball scholarship in college so she's no okay yeah so she's no joke and the kids are four and seven so no time like the present to start training for yeah you know scholarships and you know daddy daddy wants to retire before he's pooping his pants so we got to get these kids moving here in the right direction so oh my gosh you could cut that later but yeah yeah no it's everything's good man that my son loved it we were out there tonight under the light of like headlights i mean it was dark out in the driveway he just didn't want to stop playing so yeah it went well it was nice it's nice nice everything's good what are we getting together soon i think based on your your new news that you you know we can't talk about but i'm having a baby now that's not it moving on how you doing aj what's going on in your life no i'm doing i'm doing real well um weather up here is starting to turn cold so i'm going into hibernation mode um but yeah no other than that doing good what do you do for your fire pit how do you get wood i cut down trees on my property oh seriously okay yeah not that i have a ton of property but i had a shit ton of trees and i don't have a ton of trees anymore i'm trying to figure out how to fit a half court of wood at my house and for my fire pit and it's become a whole thing so i don't have dreams to cut down anyway nope nope yeah just stack it nicely to back your property next to your shed or something yeah good idea all right temps are falling like a homesick rock uh a deal they were up in the 60s it popped back up there today but they're they're heading down there's snow in the mountains in vermont and uh pretty soon there'll be snow all around my house and i will be questioning why once again i live in the northeast so i'm i'm a few hours south of you quite a few hours and it's been in the mid 30s each night fahrenheit it's been chilly yeah yeah it's it's happening yep i've had to turn my heater on i'm not happy about that it's always when can i hold out till didn't make it very long this year and that sound means it's time for the wins winning in our discord channel this week is tim mcsee he passed his aws certified cloud practitioner congratulations tim trackett pacer recently accepted a position as an avionics integration engineer at blue origin congratulations lexi ipv4 passed his comptia sec plus exam congratulations david macias passed the aws solutions architect associate exam congratulations david and jay finished his bachelor's degree in it networking congratulations jay that's awesome very proud of that welcome to new patreons this week jason belk and tethan thacker i hope i pronounce that right thank you so much for your support of what we do here on the podcast and being a member of our patreon program and also thank you to all of our listeners for your support for what we do here we really appreciate it and couldn't do it without it thank you so much now back to the show i am very excited for our guest this evening um if you've live on twitter like i do you've probably seen him pop up there before um i am honored to be able to share his story and uh chris welcome to the show candy thanks how's everything going going well so um so excited let's see here yeah yeah i know we've we've talked in the past about uh having you on here so chris you're excited to be on no i was gonna i was gonna say tell your face i figured this camera's so bad i might as well just don't show anything no it's fine we just call that resting crisp rfcs and rcs i don't i don't even know where do we begin with chris i mean how do we even start this well what does chris do now so i just recently took on um a new opportunity at cdw in the ace program and so i'll be focusing solely on azure infrastructure for the next 12 months ish and then kind of grow from there in cloud so that's my current uh what is ace for people like me that don't know what aces so ac like the helpful place um ace is like associated consulting engineer and okay it is basically a fast track program where they build out um an itinerary education different technical things that you have to do so certain certifications based on your track and then they have the soft skills side consulting like shadowing the things that you do of traditionally consulting engineers over the course of time to get you prepared to be a full speed like consulting engineer very cool so it's a a boot camp of sorts yeah some say it's like five to ten years stuffed into like 12 to 18 months oh that doesn't sound stressful at all a bit intense wow it's uh it'll be interesting um they just changed the format too so they knocked it down from 18 months to 12 months so we'll see wow one of the first guinea pigs for that so we'll see how fast i can get very cool very cool well congratulations on that well you you haven't always worked in tech though yeah uh definitely came from a different background um started in food service for the last 13 years wow so um got started in high school we had like um career center where you could go kind of pick you know i wanted to do welding i couldn't get into the program because they only took two kids culinary uh culinary class was open so i took the opportunity it was a free afternoon open you know we got to do three hours a day there just cooking and playing with food so i did that my junior and senior year of high school and like really excelled at it got some really good like stodging opportunities which in the culinary world is basically uh you work for free and usually you're doing kind of the grunt work the hard work just to prove that you deserve a position uh so an internship yeah a highly unpaid one yeah yeah um so did that bounce around kind of my local area for a while ended up where was that area chris where you from so i grew up in mid michigan so midland or mount pleasant kind of small rural areas we had um the one town we had a casino it was like the biggest one in the state so i ended up there for about two years took over a steakhouse that was fun for a while and at the same time i got the opportunity to go out to manhattan and work at what was then the number one restaurant in the world from the michelin standard um 11 maximum park um wait a minute wait a minute how do you go from a free you know free shit bird guy to like number one michelin ooh lala guy uh lots and lots of late nights and sharpening of knives um you work hard to yeah yeah i mean being young and energetic and willing to put the time and energy into it gets you pretty far anywhere um yeah i sent an email they it was kind of i wouldn't say easy but they're always looking for people to come in and do free work and always try to keep a roster full of people so i had the chance to go for a week um so wait chefs work for free when they're coming up like i worked in restaurants and nobody worked for free well in more legitimate restaurants you know like when you're working higher end and you're highly competitive to get in there um some people go in for a day some people spend a weekend a week it's not supposed to be that way but it's then tends to go that way and do you just do that to get exposure to get it on your resume like hey i worked at such and such yeah i mean you want to see what's going on in those environments i mean if anybody got the chance to go step into google or facebook or you know microsoft for a week you know and there was really no no hard times there you could just kind of look around and absorb everything why not so how does one live in manhattan without an income so luckily i was only there for a week so it was just like a working vacation if you will gotcha it was actually uh quite the experience we spent like eight hours touring like all the the big spots before my first day and i had like broken open blisters on my feet before i wouldn't work 16 hours so that was fun oh man so so or something like how did you how did you end up getting that that opportunity um so they kind of like i said they kind of keep postings open for positions um they have massive staffs um i think there was like 40 people in the back of the house and i mean andy's working kitchens you don't usually have 40 cokes running around that's insane yeah well when you're doing like six figures for dinner sales too it's nuts but like yeah so except for people who haven't worked in restaurants you're talking like a hundred thousand dollars plus of meals serving in the night is that what that means yeah which is a lot of money so one dinner service i think was like 130 000 and like a five hour span so that's what the restaurant sold in meals in five hours wow yeah it was like 300 at the time just to sit at the table per person that didn't include drinks or anything special and and how so we're probably going to talk about culture later in your current gig what kind of people you're working with right in a place that you know it's 300 to walk in the door like are the staff as douchey as the clients coming in so that place was really unique right um it's highly competitive there's a bunch of kids my age and they're not just like new york kids they're not just kids that graduate like culinary school like the chef at the time was from i might butcher this i want to say denmark but i i think that's wrong but so he had a bunch of like um northern european kids there and there's probably 15 or 20 and they're all fighting for their visas um they're all there like this is this is their their life um so they're pretty heads down working hard um they were pretty willing to help out they had a good culture there probably one of the better ones i've been involved in um but very robotic at the same time so you'd say you you got good at this really early did you develop a passion for it or were you you were good at it it just made sense so you just kept going on down the road so a little bit of bulls um you know i grew up helping on my aunt and uncles farm like when i was 12 and spend my summers doing that so we had a lot of work ethic like you know kind of been grind already and then you get into kitchens and it's a lot of like hard work and manual labor so i was used to that aspect of it um you know i got to put food on the table and help out so i you know i had to do it to survive and then at the same time i found like i was good at it and i enjoyed doing it um and for a while i had a passion um a couple incidents kind of burned that out unfortunately but at the same time you know landing me where i am now so i can't complain about that and and you know you're right like yeah so burnout and it's a thing right it's it's a tough stressful environment and it just dawned on me as you're talking man kitchens are tough stressful environments you want to see the worst of people try to feed them expensive food yeah well you know what's weird too is like it's not the expensive restaurants and the country clubs i mean you get some you get some tough people there it's your mom and pop you know something for under ten dollars people like the casino when people are getting stuff for free or using the rewards points like it's the cheapskates that are the worst and the cheap restaurants you know somebody who's spending ten dollars and ten dollars means a lot to them so yeah right those are some of the rough ones so when did you get like the ooh la la gig you went from like the free manhattan come up you know stuff to when did you land and become a big shot so i was kind of doing all right at the casino um they let me go for the week to go out to manhattan they're really like excited um but at the same time there's a bunch of stuff going on be out like outside our um control there so they lost a lot of like sales and revenue so at the same time i'm literally on my way back from new york and a guy who runs like the nicest restaurant in town gets me up and is like hey i want you to come over run the restaurant do your thing free reign um so i went over there and i had a pretty good stride going but i just didn't get along there um there were just some value differences and things so that was really my first like big big shot on my own um i had good feedback i just i didn't fit into the culture you still in high school no no no we're talking like 21 22 at this time okay cool still i mean that's that's how we're young to be owning a kitchen yeah go run my kitchen that's impressive like my god man yeah um it's interesting especially like you know you're typically up until the day that i left to switch into like tech um i was still the youngest one in the kitchen managing everybody so it was definitely a big learning curve to manage people who are two or three times your age and you hear like i could be your mom i could be your grandma but it taught me a lot of really good lessons and i met a lot of really great people along the way um we actually had like the biggest probably the biggest jump and chance i've ever taken in my life my girlfriend and i like i said the last restaurant that i spoke of um it wasn't working out and i was looking for something different maybe take a break i was burnt out i'm just bad situation after tough situation so i was going to school i had the ability to take like three months off um i wasn't working and i had somebody hit me up down in georgia and they were like hey we got this really high-end like private dining club i want you to come down be my right-hand man you know do that um and so the wife and i came down here and she was in food service since it's time to at the time too so like um it kind of worked out and um we took the jump down here it's going on four years now um ended up at a private dining club it was extremely bougie um there was no golf course and nothing like that like you just came in it was like 500 a member per month before you even ate crazy so we got to do a bunch of fun stuff there um but it just um it wasn't paying the bills and so i was fortunate the last gig i had um i ended up as a food service director for a fortune 500 company here in town managing like all their restaurants um through different properties that they have through town um doing all their caterings other big wig dinners things like that so that was really when i kind of got my big shop um doing the full advantage of a multi-million dollar account for a fortune 500 client um wow i think i was it was like 25 at the time so that's incredible so so you've talked a few times about like um you know somebody hits you up like hey like you you obviously have a reputation like how did you you socialize that reputation right like i'm curious like how does somebody living up in michigan get a phone call from someone down in georgia and be like hey i want you to come run this thing like how did that happen is there like a linkedin for chefs well so thankfully like who was down here was an old personal contact that course that i went to in high school like the after hours program it was somebody that i met from another local high school and so we kind of stayed in contact throughout the years when he moved away and then i came down here um but otherwise like all my other opportunities have come through kind of similar to what's happened now um instagram was a big one for and facebook you know for food because everybody's looking on there you know that's when the popularity the rise in popularity of like um facebook pages for restaurants and um yelp and all those other things and so i kind of threw myself out there i'd take pictures you know we're posting stuff we're getting the restaurants to post up doing videos doing um dinners out in the garden wine dinner specialty stuff just trying to catch everybody's attention and kind of being a hashtag horror if you would so you're building these like beautiful plates of food and you're snapping some photos and just you're throwing them out there for everybody to see yeah and i'll tell you photos don't look as good on an iphone 6 as they do on you know an iphone 13 so i think i've still got some foam around back there so we'll play it on the phone nice that's great that's great what an incredible story i i mean i i didn't know the depth of all this like i knew you came from the food service industry i didn't realize like at what level you were playing at so what what precipitated the move like it seems like you're you're kind of like at the top of your game like i can only imagine what it may have been but i i you know i want to know from you yeah i mean um i had some really good opportunities some that i squandered that i wish i would have stayed at at least longer um had some other opportunities i wish i hadn't taken um got a little you know zealous and overzealous and excited um but i had really the opportunity i mean if we wanted to move i could have went wherever and you know humbly probably fell in wherever i wanted to um but as you know like restaurants or nights and weekends and holidays and so um i miss like eight thanksgivings in a row uh with my family and so like my birthday happens to fall on the 24th of november so like um this year it's the day before thanksgiving there's been times where my birthday's been on thanksgiving and that's one of the biggest days you know of the years so as i started to settle down with my girlfriend fiance now wife you know priorities changed and then um i was in a really good position where i was as food service director i could have stayed there for probably as long as i wanted to but long term it wasn't a 20 30 40 year option at some point i was probably gonna have to go back to nights and weekends and so i really didn't want to give up the lifestyle and you know the family time and all those things so fortunately um you know coke had hit and the opportunity kind of arose where i said like you know i'm watching all my friends lose their jobs i'm watching restaurants clothes all these things and for me i was still stable in my position um you didn't have a lot going on on campuses so at that point i had to take a step back and say like i've got to figure out something more long term i've got to figure out something that's going to be equitable and something that'll keep me entertained because that's one thing about food service and especially being a chef is like you're constantly stimulated and going and if you want to be good at it you're constantly learning and trying new things and that's something that i've always i've always enjoyed about it and so tech's always had my eye i've always liked to play around with things so i had the time at work i started dabbling around and looking around and that's kind of when i made the decision like i need to jump into this full time because if i don't do it now i'll never do it so you said covid was a pivot point i guess but it didn't sound like you lost your job or lost any money so how did it play into you saying maybe we're not restaurants so my position was contracted um and actually in the midst of covet we re-signed like a five-year deal but those aren't like concrete and given nobody had a clue i mean we had like 4 000 people on property now you're sitting at like 70 people on property with no intention to return so you see the writing on the walls i guess uh like how long can i be in this environment maybe right yeah i mean thankfully the the company that i contracted for was an awesome company um and it kind of had come full circle on me again um i could tell that story uh off camera because i can't name names of that company but um yeah it was just one of those things where i saw it like you know before i lose my job let me have something you know and back up because obviously like we are solo down here in georgia we're a thousand miles away from family we don't have any you know safety net other than ourselves so you know we had i had to make a move and it felt like the right one how does one start looking to figure out how to get a job in tech right like what do you do there i'm a chef i want to work in tech like i was a cable guy at least i was playing with things and like plugging things in and had a meter i could read like signals like how did you how did you start right where do you start your starting point zero yeah i mean i had kind of dabbled in the idea before so cooking was always a means to an end and i had actually went to college to be an accountant like i want to be a cpa of all things and so um i'm like six classes from getting my bachelor's in accounting and i had a local contact who was ran his own accounting firm and he was like you know come in sit down we'll talk um i sit there and he's like you're a little too old to become an accountant i was like 23 at this time so i was like okay i i guess i guess this bachelor's degree wasn't worth it um you're too old to be an accountant at 23 is that what he said yeah he told me by the time i set for my like cpa and got everything i'd be like 26 or 27 and i'd be too old entering the game too late i was like okay all right wow um i had taken a couple computer classes in in college though and dabbled around with the idea um i had been introduced to python a couple other things and of all things it's probably about a year before this happened i'd come across like network check videos um this was like in his early days and so i had remembered that when i came back around and i was like looking through my youtube history i'm like i know this guy's in here somewhere so i found it and i just started going through that and i was like i need to you know if i'm going to figure out where i go i need to figure out what i want my specialty to be so i just started playing around with different things and like being a cis admin had like didn't sound fun at all um programming was not going to be my thing like i like programming um and i like playing with that like devops side but that seemed like a really steep curve and one day i was sitting there and the internet went out and i was like i need to figure this out i have no idea how it works and so it just kind of started to snowball on it and that's when i decided to like look into networking so did you really even have anybody to bounce ideas off of or ask questions of it sounds like you were doing a lot of this on your own for the most part um i had a colleague who was pretty good with computers he's built you know a couple played around a bunch of stuff over the last 20 years and so i could ping like basic questions off of him which was really helpful to kind of get the ball rolling and then after that it was just jumping in head first spending hours upon hours with like a headache trying to figure out what was going on and what was what and how things were interconnecting and um so it was kind of a solo show yeah you weren't connected to any kind of community yet right you didn't know that it was out there at that point no right and how far into the the learning on your own the the dabbling the trying different things did you decide that you were going to try to apply for something and and how did that work i didn't apply for anything um just because i knew that there was going to be like a massive um pay cut going from you know being in a director position to jumping over so it's like i know that i at least for now i have time to build up a skill set so i think the first time i applied was actually that the job offer was made to me you know when frank's reached out but other than that like the first time i applied i got the job thankfully so was this a long game for you because any time i hear somebody say i took a pay cut to pivot it always gets my attention right like who's looking to make less money you're an established guy you had a propensity to be a great chef you're running stuff like that that's a big risk or a big move i mean i get the insight that you had with cove and uh maybe you know i look into tech which is this thing but how do you like it's just you and your wife you're on your own you're a thousand miles away from family and you're gonna take a pay cut that's a that's a big risk right yeah i mean thankfully we're in like a fortunate position where you know i was making enough money where we had a you know good buffer um but it's i mean it's as tight as it can be kind of thing um you know we had to do some things like get rid of some toys sell the truck um you know cut back on all the fun activities but i look at it you know two three five years down the road if i can break even to where i was and you know potentially double what i was making then um in a long run it'll be worth it but yeah it seems like you had her support right she was on board and that's what i wanted to bring up were you dating engaged or married at this point so the entire time we've been married okay since i've started this what were those conversations like when hey honey guess what yeah it's a job and make less money isn't this cool network chuck told me to do it right now and that's that's kind of what i wanted to know did could she see could she kind of see the writing on the wall with you that hey i you were thinking you might want to pivot or or did you kind of keep that to yourself no yeah we have um we have an extremely open relationship and communication and so um over the years she kind of knew and i've been open about that like you know long term this isn't it like it's fun now but is it when i'm 40 or if we have kids is this something that i want to be doing um and so when i started to tell her about it i mean you know all my other kooky crazy ideas she was just like okay and what's funny about that is like i circled back with her after of course all everything started happening um i was pulling my hair out because it was a whole bunch of stuff i didn't know when i took on the front's like position doing contract work and she's like i don't know and like the next thing you know like i got the network admin position and she's like no i wasn't i wasn't sold that you were gonna do this for the first couple months and then when i started seeing you four six eight hours a day like after work in the office like studying when i saw you like sitting on the couch with headphones and watching videos like falling asleep watching videos and doing stuff she's like i knew you were committed i knew if you were gonna do it it was gonna happen so wow there's a lesson in that right like you can make that decision and commit to something and just everybody in this industry right like you just you put your head down and you just grind away and you have to do it in your spare time and nights weekends like whatever like just yeah it's a lot of work right to break in sometimes yeah no i mean that's one thing like you know posting on twitter and discord and all that like all the fun stuff and the wins and things like that is always exciting but like i think one thing to be like proud of the chairs like you know the fails and the grind as well because like i would sit at work in all my downtime and read and like go home at night and like give up you know family time or time with the dogs playing video games like going on trips you know committing my time to that and so it was a sacrifice i mean fortunately things have fallen in my lap if you will um you know uh very fortunate in that aspect but you know the hard work's there and if you're willing to put it in i think you know you'll be repaid for it it shows passion right like who the hell is going to do that if they don't if they're not interested and into it you know like you just can't you can't long-term fake something like that yeah oh no subnetting like just you know one thing after another i mean you really got to be interested right and even at that i mean like i i'm like super excited about like terraform and infrastructure's code right now and like every day i'm pulling it up and doing it i'm like i gotta step away from this today before i burn myself out because like too much of a good thing you know right 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 they're 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 an 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 netaly.com today now back to the show so i i kind of want to take a step back like let's talk about what it was like to try to break into that first tech job like you you've been studying for a while you're building up the skills you know so so let's let's see like what was the job what was the process what was that like like obviously somebody saw like you know that they had an opportunity to present to you and they they took a chance on you yeah the first time it was interesting because i was sitting on twitter like at work the one day and all of a sudden i get like a dm from some random guy and he's like hey i think i have an opportunity for you you know here's my whatsapp number get a hold of me it's like okay i mean you know this could be fake but if it's five or ten minutes of my time what's five or ten minutes of my time so i get a hold of this guy and like um as i'm on the phone with him i'm looking him up and like everything he's saying is true he's like a former cisco guy he you know worked kind of high up for like 18 years there moved back to europe started his own like network automation company they you know they're kind of been up and running for like four years now they're like okay this sounds legit but everything he's saying is like way over my head and he's like don't worry like you know we just need some help and we'll help you along the way i just want to give you a shot because you look like energetic and um you know i like that you're trying and that you're willing to put yourself out there so wait a minute there's secret sauce here yeah yeah you're not qualified you don't have the skills but he sees something in you and he's like i'm gonna teach you this is i hear this a lot right people say oh i'm not i'm not good enough i'm a qualified like you you reached there's something to i mean i look at my own story there's something about reaching beyond your comfort level and saying yes to things you're not sure you can do because on the other end of that conversation that person sees something in you believes in you you know like i feel like an imposter a lot of times and one time i had a director be like oh yeah sure everybody has it wrong and you're so clever you have everybody fooled right like this guy saw something in you and and and pulled you pulled you into this so what what's the secret sauce what did he see so your commitment he saw your passion you saw you're working hard like how did you pull that off because that's no joke right yeah i mean you know you've got to be honest out there and tell people what you're doing i mean even if it's not big exciting stuff like you know i came from cooking and now i'm practicing subjecting here i am like trying to throw a physical lab together even though i have no idea like what raman is and the last guy doesn't know what the password was like you know just i think networking is one of the biggest things that people like under value and i don't mean the physical sense i mean like you know how we we've all connected um you found you on twitter you said yeah and on twitter you had been posting your study journey your lab building your you're sharing it right saying this is what i'm doing okay all my interactions um i think i posted some videos like wiring up my physical lab and trying to go through some things asking questions kind of posted whatever chapter i was on things like that um and he had followed me for like a month and i didn't even realize it he was you know he's like hey i've been watching your journey i think it's really cool um i think you know i want to take a chance just because you look like somebody who will take and take advantage of it did you have any certifications no okay so everyone out listening who's trying to figure out how to break into it or networking no certifications no computer science degree no experience but you started you made the decision you made a commitment you started grinding away you shared your journey with the community and somebody saw your passion and your drive and your interest and gave you a job right is that what you're telling us i mean i was getting paid to do technical documentation and troubleshooting for wow network automation tools for a company halfway around the world you know and i had never logged into an ide for more than 10 minutes and i had no idea what git was or how to pull down a repo um i pretty much sat there for a week couldn't get on the vpn um although the instructions were wrong so um so if you weren't connected to the tech community and you weren't sharing and writing your story and making videos that job it doesn't sound like it would have happened right you you needed you needed to tell the world what you were doing for the sky to be able to find you right yeah i mean without the network piece without the community piece i mean i wouldn't be here at all um it's you know it helped with that because somebody was watching and was at the right place at the right time um especially the way you know twitter algorithms work and things like that i was fortunate in that aspect um you know and then at the same time i like to end up in this community as well was just through random like spotify searches um looking for podcasts and things like that and it was i think you guys are only a couple months in too so the spy happened chance that or happenstance that i came across that um and like if you're out there don't be afraid to like throw whatever you're working on out there half the time i was just throwing like hey this is the chapter i'm working on somebody would pipe in and like hey if you need help or hey this is a really good method or something like that i mean i got a lot of really valuable tidbits that way just like sharing what i was doing for the day i i'm like still trying to process everything here like this is such an incredible incredible journey and incredibly short too so like what when did you like you know door-to-door when did you leave the the cooking industry and when did you start in the tech industry like how we talk in months years decades not decades i know but are you talking like start of like the study journey or just like well i like from the time you left the the your position working in the cooking or food industry to to landing your first tech job let's can we start where the decision was made when you made a decision that you wanted to work in tech and you were going to start taking action from that decision until you landed that job how long did that take yeah it was february of this year um end of february that i landed ccna it was on a friday um you did have your ccna i wanted to ask you about certs so i got the first contract gig before my ccna and then about a month in i landed my ccna and then i took about oh let's see it took about two months um and i was just like i gotta do it if you know i don't want to start losing information i want to make the jump financially we were able to make some decisions that allowed it and so by let me think about this may into early june i made the decision to start applying um locally or for remote positions i think i applied to about a half dozen or so before i got a call back was less than a year yeah so about three months i felt yeah february to may so you made a decision in february you got a gig in may it's you're one of those guys that's hard to like chris i've been extremely blessed and fortunate for the opportunities that have followed my way so so that first consulting company um is that something you're still doing on the side are you still working with them um so i was with them for about six months and as i transitioned over because i did transition over the dod and things like that it was just best interest to not have ties to foreign companies was that so that was the automation guy right from europe okay and you were you started with technical documentation is that what you said that's what you were working on yeah so like all of their um on their website all their documentation all their white papers everything like that i was tasked with restructuring rebuilding um and putting a less technical spin on it and at the same time i was supposed to study it so that i could start helping with like troubleshooting projects gotcha gotcha so from there where did you go next so after that i ended up um it was july of this year ended up with the dod in a local local office here on base as a network admin and so kind of just a it was an interesting setup just the way everything's going but there's like three local networks nothing too complicated and uh it was very slow very very slow how do you get a job at the dod aren't they like military people or like did you have to get clearances how does that happen yeah so um got a clearance which ironically or coincidentally um my clearance showed up on my last day with them but uh but you have to be sponsored to get a clearance like who sponsored you yeah so the contracting company um that are the company that i contracted through sponsored and then um we worked with the dod and then the government to or the government the military on the project that they had going on so it was kind of a cool little setup got to see some different things had a really slow walk in the stuff but then again there's a lot of red tape there with dod and like you said having to get clearance and things like that so it took a while to get rolling and then um i was only a couple weeks in i was like two or three weeks in and the former network engineer who was like the like the ciso at the time was like talking to me he's like how do you like it and i was like yeah you know it's good um it's smaller than i expected but you know that's fine um you know do everything that i can and he kind of goes um yeah i know you're gonna outgrow it at some point it's kind of small it's kind of slow not a lot changes around here so um all the big projects are kind of in place unless you have to like switch out um a switch or something like that something dramatic happens um but he goes so i don't foresee you being here more than like a year and a half or two years because you'll probably outgrow it and so that was kind of like a i don't want to say a red flag but it kind of like a light went off and i was like well if i'm gonna put a year and a half or two years in here you know where do i want to be in a year and a half for two years or where else could i be and so i just kind of had that thought and then about a week later i saw somebody posting about a associate consulting engineer position that kind of caught my attention a friend in the community the fact that you you even had that thought is kind of something not kind of but it's definitely something special about kind of your mentality and how you've gone through your career is you got this job and and you're already thinking about your next step and your long game and that kind of thing and that's that's not something you see in everybody so i think that that says a lot about you and your character that you are already kind of seeing hey this place is kind of slow moving i'm trying to build a life out of being in in the tech industry or doing tech related jobs maybe i need to already start looking at the next thing so that was really cool to hear you analyze that kind of right as you cut into one door yeah it was one of those like you know you get an opportunity and then the better opportunity always comes up right after um and it was a hard decision um i you know you know shout out to weezy netsequezy for the opportunity i had kind of just inquired about what was going on after he posted it and just what it was and so i sat back for about two weeks and thought it over talked to the wife and i was like you know this would be a really fast move i just got an opportunity i mean i'm locked in here i can take it slow take my time you know get good at what i'm doing and then try to jump up you know and run the rat race or there's this really like sounds too good to be true opportunity over here um you know should i go investigate that more and you know the wife is all on board for it so i started pinging weezy a little bit more a little bit more and one thing led to another and it was just the right it was the right path because other things were going on um you know where i was already at they were just kind of like yeah this long term is not going to be the opportunity i want for myself where did you see that posting where did we z post that job so um weezy posted it up i think it was in jobs um and i just so happened to come across it because that's one of those ones that i had muted at the time and the discord yeah yeah in the discord and so um another community platform that's what i wanted to point out like twitter got you that first gig and now you know different community platform you're in plugged into the community seems to be paying off right yeah um networking and networking yeah yeah you gotta network the network um i had like only had conversations with ouija back and forth i mean everybody knows he's a huge cheerleader super supportive guy and so i have been back and forth with him on twitter a little while a little bit but never really chatted with him and so i got to know him a little bit going back and forth in the discord in any one channel just talking about like hey what's this opportunity what's it look like and that's when like he dropped it on me that he was actually in the program and so he had like firsthand experience to tell me what was going on and so that's when um kind of started that process so at that point twice out of the three opportunities i'd gotten you know networking and community had paid off once again it's nice to hear yeah yeah that's incredible so what do you have in front of you you've got this uh you said it was a 12 to 18 month ace program that they're trying to get you to get through it in 12 what does it look like after that are you working directly with customers or what are you going to be doing yeah so fall into a full-time consulting engineer position post sales doing deployments things like that for customers whether they're returning things like that for azure deployments i'm on like the hybrid and infrastructure side so that'll be exciting and then hoping to develop more of like the infrastructure's code platform that they have going on hold on so you'll be you'll be post sales where you'll go install stuff but it's you know the cloud man it's just it's just i mean it's right it's right here we've got to reach up to install it i mean are you i don't know maybe i don't understand like you know it's somebody else's infrastructure right so what do you install post is somebody gonna want to connect to azure and you're gonna help them connect to azure yeah it's a lot of um kind of hybrid blends of like taking their you know their ad and moving up into the cloud maybe there's some green field deployments things like that my understanding is that there's a lot of uh we call it they're bringing over a lot of stuff into the cloud that they already had on prem especially with everybody going to um less of a physical footprint these days with staff you know you don't need the big buildings and things like that so they're just getting rid of physical infrastructure right so be moving people up into the cloud so yeah i hear the cloud's a big thing it's as big as you want it to be yeah that's i mean that's that's the place to be right now right it's it's a very good direction in my opinion yeah i think it's um for me like the big um attraction is that automation's a big one for me um that's just how my brain works i've always liked that concept i do like some of the coding aspects and things so that's where like infrastructure's code comes into play um and just the mobility i think you know going forward you know the work from home thing going on things like that the lack of physical hardware that people have access to i think cloud only gets stronger over the next decade or two which is really important for me so i wanted to be as ahead of the curve as i could be on whatever i could do we've talked about it before but i'm amazed at how quickly the whole model has changed to like that just distributed you know instead of everything's you know instead of going hairpinning through your hub for everything the way it was not that long ago now there's just stuff everywhere it's it's it's all distributed all over the place it happened pretty quickly i guess the covet thing kind of accelerated it maybe right with everybody at home and i don't know it's it's been amazing to watch like when i started not too long ago it was all on-prem and i managed our data centers and i blinked my eyes and were you know multi-cloud and everything's moving there and you know agile speed of deployment go go go like it's i see the benefits right it's it's real yeah i think it definitely had a massive impact on that i mean if you didn't have everybody working from home and um needing the interoperative operability of everything like that i don't think it would have happened for another five years or so you wouldn't have sold so many people and then you know with the supply chain things going on too people can't get physical hardware it's like well why not go to the cloud and at the same time if you do it right you know you can be efficient in your cost and you know maybe save a little bit of money at that what's magical to me is the ability to spin up capacity instantly like as one example when covet hit i work for a large company and just everybody went home and they we did not have the capacity with our vpn infrastructure in our data centers to accommodate that so you were constantly getting kicked out it would take an hour and a half to get logged in in the morning and it all got spun up you know in a cloud provider it was overnight and we went from nobody could connect for weeks consistently to like poof there it is you know i mean that's you know how long from a guy who's been building infrastructure in on-prem data it takes forever to get that crap racked stacked working circuits like you know whatever you need to add capacity and to be able to do it instantly in the cloud and that's just the speed at which things are moving is just really insane and the cloud enables that it's really cool yeah it's crazy going from like you know building simple networks and doing you know all the stuff in the ccna and my like network admin stuff and then turn around and like hop in azure and even like through terraform and things like that just spin up here's a v-net and within that i can just drop subnets and it's all in just a matter of like 30 seconds it can be spun up i mean all that works been done in the background so it's crazy to see kind of like i don't wanna say old school but you know it's a very traditional and um you know physical way to do it and then go hop in the extremely virtualized side of it and see how quick it is so i don't want you to give away company secrets or anything like that but can you can you kind of unpack this uh this ace program it's really intriguing to me that they they bring people in that in this case you didn't have any clout experience but they're willing to put you through this 12 to 18 month program kind of the high level what does that program look like they got you going through azure certification programs are you just shadowing other team members all day what does it look like yeah so um i've only been there a couple weeks too so take everything and say with a grain of salt but um um and if anybody from cdw is listening i've only been there two weeks so take it with a grain of salt but so yeah i mean it's a pretty well kept secret it's one of those things where i mean cdw's massive i think you know well over the 10 000 employee mark and they're constantly trying to you know keep the pipeline stacked with like talented individuals and passionate individuals and that was a big thing that was thrown to me i think i had five or six like interviews during the process with people from the program and above the program and you know it was all management things like that some technical interviews some consulting interviews things like that and what they're really looking for is somebody who's passionate and driven they said you know we can teach you the technology but we need somebody who's going to show up and want to do it and also somebody who can speak to people um because you know as aj would know being a consultant and things like that you have to talk to a variety of people and you know be able to translate everything that's going on effectively on both sides of it so secret sauce chris secret sauce passion drive and communication that's i hear this a lot and i've experienced it myself we can teach you the tech but we see your passion we can see that you're driven and you're able to communicate oh my god they're the three things right there i've got the cheat code right like i was a manager for eight out of those 13 years in food service so you know i know what to look forward people and i know what i was looking for so um if i'm going to do it i'm going to do it right and be that person that gets noticed because you know college eating or maybe even brown-nosing but you know kind of you have to know how to play the game a little bit too as well so we have to be good with people and that's what i was thinking as you were telling your story earlier in the restaurant business i mean it's a people business right like you're you're working with people you're feeding people it's you're constantly interfacing with with people and communication and nonverbal communication picking up on cues like yeah you you build all those skills right in that gig and and now it's transferable but i i've been i i've been given jobs by the way that i was under qualified for and they told me the same exact thing we can teach you the tech we see you're passionate you know home lab community engagement whatever you know we can see that you're driven you have certifications you study a lot you know and you can communicate and that's what we need and i've heard that from a lot i've been on a lot of interviews i i just you just got me all excited those three things i think have been my secret sauce so far and it seems to be working for you too yeah i mean people want to work with people who they like you know and they can get along with and we've all worked with the wrong person and so you know especially when you're going to invest so much into somebody from a technical aspect like better be somebody who you know is going to show up want to do it you can turn your head and not have to worry about what they're doing in the background and like in this program i mean i'm sitting at home you know and being being that work from home makes it even more challenging because for me i don't have that face-to-face contact like you said you know where i can kind of start to network in person which is a little bit easier um now try and do everything over meetings virtual meetings and things like that a curveball for me but you know having the accountability and things to do my studies do my you know keep up on my tasks things like that hop in and network where i can and do what i have to do um you know that's gonna be you know where you start showing off and showing that you're really passionate about what you're doing because you're just keeping up on everything without anybody telling you to and i didn't mean to pivot us away from tim's questions just a fantastic question i just got excited so you're doing the certification stuff you're learning azure you're shadowing people is that is that the crux of the the program how are they getting you skilled up specifically yeah it's um i mean imagine just like college fortunes or anything like that they you know they build upon each other and there's like a soft skill side to it as well as the technical side and they blend in together um there's cert tracks that we have to go down that are predefined for us and being like a microsoft partner we have pretty good access to all those azure stuff we've got like o'reilly learning and linkedin and cbt and things like that so we kind of have keys to the kingdom when it comes to education and resources which is really nice i'm thankful for that because every time i've needed something it's been there and and you're afforded the time during the day to learn stuff right like it's your job right now just to learn you get certified and yeah so really for the next 12 months my whole job is to be learn to be the best azure engineer that i can be um we've got like i said we blend in like the shadowing and consulting so you get that side of it and that takes up part of your time but as well like right now 60 70 80 of my time is just burnt up with studying and um going through all that technical content trying to get through it that's fantastic you're going to be a beast at the end of the year just yeah yeah yeah yeah it'll be interesting so i just had like my first meeting and went over goals i still have to get my security plus which i've been studying for for like four months now um but i'll have that done at the end of the month i'll have i'm going to sit for my az104 which is like the intermediate like admin exam um i'll sit for that before the end of the year and hopefully pass that and then by the end of february i'll probably have the linux like certified administrator and then by may i plan on having the azure expert certs so it's going to be fast paced wow how does one lab for cloud studies i kind of know the answer because i was on the aws track for a minute but just for people listening you know you built you said earlier you build a physical lab so if you're studying cloud how do you lab cloud yeah so the really cool thing about that is that um azure like microsoft offers a 12-month um free trial with like 150 200 credit for your first month and then aws has the same thing for like 12 months you can hop on they have a free tier so you can go play with things and so um if you go hop on like microsoft has a really good setup where on microsoft learn it takes you through all the topics that they built themselves that attach to the different certs and then you know you can go take that because some of them have integrated labs go hop on your free account just start playing around with it and as long as you don't mess anything up which if you're trying to learn you can learn your billing and subscriptions and things like that um you don't spend any of your personal money and you can have a basically a free virtual set billing alerts right that's the key there yeah i got scared i got one this morning from aws and i haven't played with that in like four months um if it was only like seven dollars i've seen people with like five-digit bills come through because i didn't shut something off hey i've heard that oops i forgot to turn something off whoopsie yeah we've got a five dollar alert on that one yeah we've got like a an allowance at work which is nice um and then on top of that it's pretty restricted so that we don't go spending too much company money man uh that this is just absolutely incredible i i hate to say it but we're coming to the end of our hour here chris yeah i know right um anything that you want to like cap this off with you know advice that you have for people either looking to break in or or jump from one career to another such as you have done what what's what's the best words of wisdom that you wouldn't want to give them i think the one thing is that you've got to give it a try and it's worth it if you put the effort into it the opportunities are out there you're going to have to go outside of your comfort zone to find them but they're there if you're willing to go if you're willing to go find them they're there for you and so it might not seem like it at first i mean i went six eight months and it didn't seem i didn't know if it was going to happen and then all of a sudden it just it clicked and you know you're right now so you know be networking always be labbing all those fun things but just put yourself out there i love it from uh from like culinary master chef to uh cloud network engineer what an incredible journey uh chris thank you so much for joining us this week uh thank you so much to all of our patreons uh if you're interested in joining the patreon and hanging out with us every week here you can do so at patreon.com forward slash art of netenge and chris if people want to follow you learn more about you where can they do that how can they do that um so it's ipv faux on all the handles um ipv pho um it's so good by the way i just want to give you props it's it's a great thing it's awesome i actually tell people what foe is it's actually it's a vietnamese soup uh noodle soup and i gotta give it to uh aj he botched it one day on the winds and so uh that was enough for me to switch it from what it used to be what it used to be was good as well what was it before i forget it was bites to bits so yeah you know but even i would forget it might be like bits to bites or bites to bits and then everybody else watched it and i was like okay if any nobody else can remember it then i'm just gonna so your blog is still bites to bits we gotta work on some branding there but i do wanna just give your blog a shout out because i i'm sorry aj i know we're wrapping up but i wanted to hit this that no no i have been playing with github off and on right doing a little bit of work and i get i know how to do what i have to do but i didn't really understand what's happening under the hood in certain things and when i saw i forget where i saw but you're i'm using github to take notes blog posts on bitstabytes kind of put it all together for me like i mean i didn't even know you could do that first of all i didn't know you could take notes you know you know in in github so it's just a great i really like your blog i really like the content you've been putting out the github for me for a guy who struggles with coding and concepts like github and ci cd blah blah blah like i really like how you distill the stuff down and yeah you have a good way of describing it and it you helped me with github and i'm a guy who's been using github for a year at work so um you know good blog i like your content um sorry aj so we're where can we find you is it going to stay bits the lights bites to bits for the blog i'm working on there's some more in the hopper for the for all of that um that's not like it probably won't happen this year but yeah for now it's there i think it's linked on my twitter and on my linkedin um yeah but there's more to come with that for sure all right and we will drop all of those links in the show notes so the twitter the blog and the linkedin and you can make sure you connect and follow chris wherever he's at chris thank you so much for joining us this week man yeah thank you gentlemen congratulations uh congratulations to you you've definitely earned it uh and we're gonna keep watching you can't wait to see what you do thanks guys awesome well thank you so much and uh that's a wrap thank you and we'll see you next week on another episode of the art of network engineering 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 eng that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering dot 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