this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore keys technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray i'm back yeah it feels good to be back daddy's home that's right daddy's home and the house is a mess what did you guys do while i was gone now there's holes in the walls the doors are off the hinges no i i kept up i i enjoyed the episodes you guys did while i was away so uh nice nice work fellas nice work there you go yeah tim totally saved us that one night big shout out that was that was a good episode the great topic technical interviews uh yeah it was very well received for a last minute effort that was a really good show i thought what are you talking about last minute that was well i mean uh playing that a long time yeah we played that one it went so well we're just gonna wing it from that one yeah ah dan how are you doing i'm doing great what's new in dan's world uh looking for new monitor solutions was there a problem with your old one you don't have to answer wins uh it's a no-no now i'm surprised you're wearing that isn't that like it's what i wore a word today while you're looking for a new solution to replace it yeah all right andy how are you doing i'm good i i got a heating pad on my back i'm a beard coming in yeah life is good i spent three hours today learning some python at work i was going to ask how your automation journey is going i'm i'm i think i'm ready to stop complaining about it so yes just embrace it man just embrace it sorry well like the first four or five months of the podcast i complained about how are all these people studying and i'm not so i figured out the studying i now study at five a.m per tim burt and now is that working for you is getting up early working for you it is it is yeah yeah the only trick is to get the bed at a reasonable time and you know yeah my wife's on board she's not like yo dude we gotta hang out what's up so like she's been supportive and um yeah it's been good it goes by fast you know i yeah the hour's gone the kids are up and i'm just you know into the meat of it i want to keep going but um yeah studying is is good and i think i'm over my you know fear of of automation just jumping in and the the key was getting um what everybody's been saying getting a specific use case you know i have something i need to do at work and it's it's kind of easy like if i was doing it manually it'd be easy so they're like hey write down how you would do it like your workflow and then we'll figure out how to you know apply some code to automate it so it's right once you have that skin in the game right like once you have your use case like what's going to make your life easier you're that much more invested in like okay how does this thing work yeah and there's people that are contributing to like our automation efforts like we're early on but there's guys who know what they're doing and you know i'm just kind of sitting there like twiddling my thumb so i'm excited now that maybe i could have a win you know for me like hey i did something guys with automation so yeah i'm motivated it's good it's nice well and i think i think a big thing for me i've said this multiple times but automation is cool and all when everybody's talking about it and all the you know little tricks that they make it do and stuff but the best thing for me when i was kind of getting down that automation path was actually having you know a purpose right an objective right yeah yes a use case because it's really cool when you see all these people make you know automation do all this crazy stuff but yeah for me i have to find a use case to actually make sense of it right like how does it apply in your environment how can you leverage exactly and then on top of that me being accountable seems to be key i know that's like new information but once i put my hand up we were we had a meeting and somebody was like yeah we're gonna have to get this you know opened up eventually for this tool to work and i was like you know what i think that's kind of easy so i volunteered and now my name's on the board and people are counting on me and knowing that because otherwise i'm just going to try to hide it scares me i don't want to do it they're taking care of it so yeah put my hand up being accountable's help yeah man things things are good i'm happy you're back i missed you i missed you guys too i really did yeah it just didn't feel the same i guess on the road uh you know it was working long days mostly nights uh and so you know i mean i have every intention of you know i traveling is a very regular part of my job prior to the pandemic so you know once things return to normal i have every intention of figuring out some sort of traveling recording solution so i don't have to miss so many but that that just wasn't an option this past trip because you know working nights so it was yeah you were putting in crazy hours like yeah 14 15 hour days it was it was nuts yeah yeah didn't you say you had to you know put the solution and or work on the solution after hours and then also be ready like pretty early for any kind of support right yeah exactly yes exactly i had to do that about back in 2015 or so we had a major network upgrade and we were doing the same thing it was like each day during the day we were either you know doing support for something broke or we were preparing the changes that we were going to put in that night and we had to wait till after six o'clock at night before we could put all of our changes in and then we would do our changes we'd be there till like 11 o'clock midnight or so doing all those changes and then i had to be there like super early like six o'clock in the morning to be ready to support anything that it broke so those were those were some uh rough days yeah so i totally fill you on that yeah so i won't go into too much detail but we we were replacing switches at a at a healthcare facility so um you know replacing a bunch of switches as many as we were doing which was like over 200 across two decent-sized medical centers and then a bunch of these like outpatient type clinic areas right um you know smaller kind of doctor's offices kind of thing so the work could only start after five o'clock uh and because of the amount of switches we were doing in the time we were on site we were you know contractually obligated plus like if we want to get the work done and the time we're there we're doing like you know 20 switches at least a night uh and so we had an engineering team that i was on and then we had an installation team and we were providing oversight to the installation team because the installation team was very green and hadn't exactly done this before which was kind of a shock to us because we were sold to different billet goods so uh and then they were like you know teaching them how to stack switches and all that stuff so that was that was fun um yeah so yeah so so there was the whole installing uh late at night and then we did our due diligence i feel like but you know at 11 o'clock at night 10 o'clock at night there's not a lot of doctors and nurses hanging around to test medical devices for us so there was inevitably uh you know some fallout not a ton uh the next morning uh yeah there's no testing right you just got to wait until they open the doors and see yeah i mean the testing that we could do was like pcs and phones right like that's that's all we knew how to do we we didn't know like where all these devices live some of them didn't live on the network they were only brought out when needed kind of things so it's got to be a lot of pressure in health care you know like it's i mean they can't deliver you know they can't deliver health care if right there's a problem with the network yeah yeah i think one thing too uh because i've ran into the problems with that what would you just describe about not being able to test it is management sometimes i think they don't understand that right and and when everybody comes back in the next day and it's all broke and they're like well did you how did you just leave it like that well i don't have a way to test it right right because i mean sometimes i feel like some changes are better to be done during the day just have everybody know that hey there's gonna be you know maybe a an outage for you know 15-20 minutes or something like that but at least that way you know immediately if it's going to be broke or not right like you have people tested man i always used to fight like hell to get testers on when we're doing big stuff and the business units do not want to bother the clients so you know invariably not and then like you said they open up stuff's not working and then people want to know why you know like hey we asked for validators you know we didn't get them i want to ask you aj did you um does it feel any different traveling like you know you you had your first trip it was kind of weird and like are you kind of getting a little more accustomed to being out and about flying and feeling a little yeah um the so the the first trip i took back in february was with a different airline um that i took this trip and i will say that this particular airline was a little bit better regarding like the the pandemic stuff they had like an aisle blocked out even on a smaller you know commuter jet uh which was nice so you know i had like a row of seats to myself can hang out relax stretch out a little bit i'm a man of larger stature so it was nice big pop-ups that's right uh i will say i was in the state of indiana and i'm not sure if they know that there's still a pandemic going on yeah but i i mean it was nice though like you know there was definitely people who had their opinions about how they wanted to deal with it and that's fine there's uh but there was still definitely some guidelines around how restaurants and stores and other places should handle it so um there were a few times where we had to dine out uh because we wanted to eat before work or after work and uh that yeah pretty much all the places were following said guidelines and and things felt you know pretty safe i i've i've gone to pick up like takeout here yeah and the restaurants are just packed i mean i think pa's just given up yeah like i i should mention i got my second i haven't really announced it or broadcasted but i got my second coved shot on thursday oh so two weeks so so uh two weeks from thursday i'll be fully protected so the cdc says impacted you at all uh have you felt any effects of that i physically or yeah yeah yeah i mean i had a sewer arm which wasn't a big deal and i'll tell you the day afterward like friday i just kind of felt like it was like that you know when you're getting sick and the day before you're kind of like uh i kind of feel a little funny i just kind of felt like i didn't have a fever i was fine but just kind of all day like uh i kind of feel like i might be getting sick tomorrow but then you know i took a nap and and it was gone but but i gotta tell you even psychologically it's interesting what it's done for me because we we took the kids out over the weekend stopped at this donut place and and again i i don't know if people are just you know fatigued but you know people aren't six feet apart anymore people are on top of each other in line and and i don't know if it's part of my fatigue as well or just that i know i i got the vaccine going but like i i feel less anxious around you know people that are you know we're all messed up and all that stuff but i don't know i'm i'm really looking forward to uh moving on to the next phase of you know being like so well yeah so the cdc just came out and we can edit this out i guess if it's irrelevant but the cdc just came out and said that if you're a vaccinated household you can invite an unvaccinated household into your house you don't have to wear masks and everybody's safe that is interesting that is huge compared to where we were before i haven't had any family in my house for a year which really sucks yeah so i'm really excited to uh kind of get back to you know some some life and seeing people so anyway yeah cool i'm glad it's going well for you because i i have heard uh there's in fact my my wife's boss uh he recently got his i think first or second shot i can't remember where he's at but uh it's not going so well for him he's having some uh effects of it and he's been down and out of work for like the last day or two and my wife has had to had to deal with that so it's just interesting you know like my brother-in-law had 103 fever for 24 hours my father-in-law slept for 22 hours he was you know and my brother was a relatively you know healthy guy so yeah you hear a lot of you know my running joke is it's you know it beats diane's like you know even even if you're sick for a day you know um but yeah i know it's a i know it's a touchy topic 50 of the country feels differently than the other half so but but i'm glad that you're able to travel safely and i'm just really excited that i i will say it might be waiting it was really it was really nice to travel honestly like i i've never been to indiana it was really cool to get out there i could not believe how flat that place is i have not been somewhere like that flat you know i've lived in new england my entire life and i know the mountains here aren't gigantic but it's not flat like indiana so don't they have a lot of windmills over there uh i don't i don't actually don't remember seeing any windmills maybe because i think when if you drive to like chicago i think you pass a huge windmill farm yep but yeah tons of farmland wide open flat uh so it was it was pretty cool it's nice to travel again um so i am looking forward to to getting back to more travel but um i was going to jump into wins did you have another thought just glad you're back here them wins i'm glad to be back thank you really glad to be back um so lots of wins i'm super excited about a lot of these um because they're people that we've been interacting with over the past several months encouraging them and uh so it's nice to see them get some wins so without further ado uh running on empty as he goes by in the discord and on social media he got a huge raise and a great review at work for all of his hard work and so it's nice to finally see that recognition come in for him so congratulations running on empty um the underscore eoc passed his uh cisco security network cisco or securing networks with cisco firepower exam and that now makes them a cisco ccnp security certified congratulations the underscore eoc uh j petta the screen name pass the microsoft az 900 exam hmm okay i don't remember exactly which one that is but i know it's that's the exam i think the az 900 might be the intro okay but i'll have to off to look that up but congratulations to jay petta for for that one uh charlie oh or ryordan i hope i'm saying that right scored a new job working at microsoft as a consultant on azure and networking that's pretty dope that is dope yeah that's pretty dope congratulations charlie uh casey valdivia has an exciting new opportunity to be promoted into management as a trainer uh where they work so uh congratulations on an exciting new opportunity he's my cable guy homie that's right that's right yeah yeah you got a big promotion um bill murray not not the famous actor bill murray unless maybe maybe it is i don't know it doesn't look like him though bill murray passed the vmware advanced design ns nsxt data center exam so congratulations bill good job good job uh the real jk recently passed their ccna so congratulations to the real jk and bits two bites our buddy chris on social media and in the discord two big wins so uh two weeks ago he passed his ccna uh and now uh he just announced i think earlier today or yesterday that he scored a job as a junior developer working for a network automation company and he will be putting together demos and building use cases to show their network automation uh capabilities that they can bring in to their customers so uh just absolutely huge you know that's about two weeks ago you scored the ccna right yeah yeah exactly chef ccna developer hello hey i've been picking up some automation tools yeah is that everybody totally amazing that's that's all of them that's like the the all the wins uh i think from like the last two weeks i would like to offer a collective goat scream wow i love it do you know the screaming goat the oh yeah my wife got it for me for christmas and it's my stress relief at work if i get annoyed i like it ah i feel so good i did it it anticipates all my attention eight bucks on amazon everybody should have a screaming goat dan i showed the video that you shared with us because of that screaming goat with my family and it's now like the highlight oh yeah the taylor swift yep the so what are we talking about tonight so tonight um well i think there's like kind of a couple different kinds of of engineers and the two that you know come to my mind are kind of the the siloed engineer right like you you have your technology and that's what you do and then you're there's also the the jack of all trades master of nothing and and uh i personally have been mostly a jack of all trades master of nothing most of my career how about you guys i'm definitely a jack of all trades master none up until recently i was siloed as all get out i went and only went you know i i could go on and tell you it's a pretty big win and it was a lot to manage and a lot of services that we had to manage through that land but uh yeah just when didn't touch anything else and that was for like five years of this job so far it's recently changed and now i'm doing all the things all at once i kind of want to go back to the wind andy wants to be silent well you know you're you're protected you're insulated the expectations were lower you know in a sense sure we didn't touch any firewalls we didn't touch the core nothing to do with compartments the land was somebody else's you just you know keep it keep the weighing up and and you know we're good but uh yeah but then are you not like so the way i look at that is like i don't have to be a rock star at everything but i got to be good at everything right but i feel like in in a siloed position you have to be a rock star at whatever you're siloed in i would agree with that yeah i mean right if you're you know if you just feel like that no totally i mean that i would expect that as well if i was managing you know a team like that like guys we're you know we got one thing here again it's a complicated environment and there's a lot going on and it's it's not for the faint of heart or junior folks but um but yeah you know you can't be an ex you guys are jack of all trades right you can't be an expert at you know 15 technology stacks it's just impossible right so i would say i was a wan expert and i will say in the past eight or nine months of this new job i am an expert at nothing that's a good position to be in though because now you're learning right i'm learning so much yeah so that's that's the upside of it but you know yeah sometimes i think that sometimes yeah yeah you just got to take a nap so you know when we had the uh the mental health episode um we were talking about like adhd and stuff like that and i definitely suffer from from that but uh i think for me with that if i had to just do one thing all day long i just don't think i could do that oh yeah i'm with you right but but don't get me wrong because i feel like being a jack of all trades is a double-edged sword yeah because here lately i've got like i feel like 20 projects going on and in in a single day i can be jumping from palo alto uh configuring something on a vpn in asa i could be spinning up a they call them virtual servers and f5 a virtual server in f5 is basically a vip address right and uh i could be spinning up i do something even messing with logs in the f5 you know trying to figure out why something's not sending to the right uh pull node or pull member and then i can switch over to messing with meraki out in a out in their branch office you know like why user can't connect get connected to the wireless you know and then i can switch over to i mean it just keeps going like i i could be in aws and and this is all in a day's work right but but this it sounds like it's still all networking you know kind of related right yeah it's definitely like i don't deal with active directory or anything like that anymore right you know like when i first started my position i was technically a systems and network administrator right and and i did a little bit of server a little bit of active directory dns that kind of stuff um and then when we dedicated the network department i went straight into that and i haven't gone back so but i'd still touch servers and whatnot like i was telling you guys earlier tonight today i was i was messing with uh i was putting a data domain in our fabric right in our aci fabric so there you know i was messing with that and i don't know do you guys find it challenging jumping from one technology stack to another yeah definitely that's a hard time like i've got a yeah like like when i'm i'm deep into a technology right and then i someone you know calls me and they're like hey we can't get this working or you know whatever the case may be here i can't my app's not able to talk to you know this or that well then i gotta put the brakes on wherever i was at right and then i've got to jump over into you know this other technology and but i mean like aj says to be fair it is all networking right so networking's networking but having to jump between how this works versus how that works and then you have to think about like the logic that a device runs a packet through and and it's just sometimes it gets a little overwhelming but um yeah it it definitely sucks having to jump like that because so so when i was doing the jack of all trades master of nothing i was like an i.t generalist for several different companies and you know one one day it's exchange and active directory maybe a little bit of networking and then the next day it's like security and i've worked for a lot of manufacturing firms so there was a lot of focus on supporting cad workstations and the licensing that goes behind that and their servers to support all their drawings and this and that any other thing and uh i learned very early on not to come to work with a plan because yeah every time i had a plan of okay this is what i'm gonna do today something happened and completely derailed that plan and it was just like shifting gears and so you know i kind of kept a punch list of things that i needed to get done at some point and if i got to it that day great i crossed it off and if not i'll try tomorrow yep but you know now it's it's not it's more like you know in my current position it's more like what dan is saying like i i'm not so wide that i'm touching active directory vmware and other stuff it's still focusing on networking but you know one week it might be aci in the next week it's a traditional network upgrade swapping out some switches or uh maybe we're talking about sd-wan or you know maybe we're doing some land stuff like it's still all within networking but it still does bounce around quite a bit so was it a conscious choice did you guys make a career choice that you didn't want to be silent because for me it's just kind of the jobs that i got offered you know i i i got into the knock we've all heard that story enough and and then when i got the job i have now we were client-side but it was when the client managed their land and we just had to get them connected to our data centers and then when i got moved to data center it was all way in so it's really just kind of been my career progression like i didn't choose like i want to do one thing and one thing only because obviously now i got thrown into the deep end of like all the things yeah did you guys make like was that a conscious decision because what i'm thinking is in the job market i would imagine it's more valuable to have a more broad skill set like correct me just being a wan guy that doesn't know automation i've seen the writing on the walls you know for the past year or two and then when cisco changed all the stuff and then everybody we've met here and you guys and then what's going on at work like route switch isn't enough anymore right so for me it was a conscious decision because i i loved being a generalist i liked working at it but networking was the passion yeah right and so i wanted to find a position where i could focus more on networking and go deeper into networking rather than the little bit that i was doing previously but it's not like you wanted to be like i just want to do one thing like you figured let me have a varied skill set like you had that foresight going in yeah i mean when i thought you know when i thought about being silent before like i thought about like just working on active directory and i would not want to be a person that just works on active directory all day or just works on exchange all day like working in such a massive environment where all you know you have a person that just works on exchange all day like i couldn't do that like there's see i think you might have nailed it there do you think it's a function of the size of the company you're in uh absolutely because you know you you work for a very large what fortune 500 100 you know kind of business and so you have people that are dedicated to these these things specialists and everything right yeah yeah yeah you have to why do you think you have to i don't disagree with you but how can you just it's just more complex i think when you when you are adopting a technology for such a large organization you're you're pro you're going way deeper into it than you know you would at a smaller organization like it's just way more scaled right yeah yeah you just got times however many you know right uh people or how many servers or whatever the case might be like the bigger the key the tougher when you're supporting like hundreds of thousands of users you need a bunch of you know domain controllers to support that or right exchange servers with mailboxes to support that so if you had one guy doing all of it for a fortune 100 sorry for that yeah because it's just too much work i mean code upgrades alone on gear would keep you busy all year yeah let alone doing anything else just because there's so much gear i guess right right right yeah and i've worked you know for organizations that had less than a thousand people and so we had like two exchange servers and maybe a handful of domain controllers and so that was still relatively manageable with a small team right but there still wasn't enough work there for a person to be doing exchange all day or office 365 all day you know maybe maybe initially like you know because we were on ramping to office 365 so there was a lot of work to do there to prepare for that but that was like the project phase right like once we got into the o m phase it was just you know it became part of like the regular tasks so do you think the majority of new people breaking into the field are getting jobs at smaller places that would be interesting i think i think it depends on where you live and yeah the opportunities like i i don't think it's unfathomable for a junior person to land you know working with with you maybe not you know directly alongside you but working at the same company you do right being a network engineer yeah i mean i i feel like uh so for me you know i i didn't know what i was getting into when i first got into it i just i was excited to learn everything i could right i just wanted to get my hands and everything so um i think now with the years that i've had uh if i was to move somewhere else or you know go to a different job or something like that i'd i think i would tend to not want to be siloed still just because i know i know how i am or how how something can get boring to me or something like that it would just it'd just be rough uh but i will say in i'm so flip-flopped too because uh one thing i wish i could get more time with is the f5s like i i think it's a really cool technology the the big ip ltm stuff uh but i just don't have the time right to dig super deep into it and so that's another downfall of being a jack of all trades right or having to wear a lot of hats at a company is you you might not have the time to make something look as pretty as you want it to in in that that's kind of like that f5s for me yeah i i will say for me the the most frustrating thing is is um troubleshooting right like i'm troubleshooting an issue and i know it's an active directory like the solution is over there but i can't cross the fence right like it's it's it's outside of my boundary even though i i know what the problem is and i know where to go to fix it i don't have the access to go and do that right and for me that varies from customer to customer because i could be working with a small customer and network admin is also the cis admin and has the keys to the kingdom or i could be working with a larger customer like you know andy's organization and the guy i'm working with just does lan or just does lan and and that's it and that was one advantage of being siloed is i knew our way in so well that if something did break troubleshooting i i could tell you in five minutes if it was the weigh-in or not but now now you know we might have a problem in our internet zone which is new to me and i'm like oh hell i'm you know i'm pulling drawings how does this work where are we doing the thing and like so that's the challenge i'm having is trying to get acclimated to you know maybe a dozen stacks of technology you know how do you get that all in your head and how i mean it'll come with time but right you know to to get that level of familiarity and comfort so that i can just jump in one and be able to help out on the fly like i'm out there right now and that's part of what i miss maybe about being siloed as like i was looked to as you know a you know a leader of sorts like i could tell people junior to me how things were working what to do people will call me if there was a problem you know there's a running joke now i like joke i tell like them like i'm just the idiot of the group i'm like because i'm surrounded by million people like it just you know it's right it's a good but here's the thing there here's the thing though is like i think after you have more time with this you'll get better yeah right like i've already gotten better in the yeah like yeah but it's it's hard but you know it's what is it like the big fish in the little pond verse i got a little fish in the big pond i kind of felt good about myself i don't want to say i was coasting but like i knew the flow i knew what was going on i knew when i had to work and when i could do something else and and yeah and now like everything's new and i'm like oh my god like how does this work and what is this and now it's multi-vendor and there's automation and you know mpls and cloud and just all this stuff coming at me but it is time and the more time i spend in it and that's part of why i'm excited too about life slowly returning to normal at least for us here like the kids are in school because i can dedicate a little more and more time as things start to normalize in the world oh yeah to be able to focus on this stuff because i've said it before if i'm interrupted every 10 to 15 minutes here by the little guys you know as soon as i start to get into something i got to stop i got to go do something like you said dan start all over like where was i and and how to yeah it's been a really tough environment to get acclimated to you know to to all this stuff i wish i could remember it they sent it they sent out like a book at work and it it's basically like being a generalist is where it's at right now proven in science and what they're looking for like i think generalists might be the wrong term but being that jack of all trades having a varied skill set it's very attractive they need less and less deep dive like oh okay you are the ospf expert you know everything about it how much value does that really bring to an organization you've seen the job postings the job descriptions it's they're all looking for the unicorn somebody who is an expert at everything yeah who's going to take 50 grand a year it's like the running joke right but yeah right the more you know it seems like the more valuable you'd be i know if i like you can't get a job at my place now if you don't know automation right two years ago it wasn't like that if you if you were good at route and switch you know rock on come on in now that's part of the gatekeeping process if if you don't know automation sorry like it's been don't you think it's interesting how quickly that kind of changed right like it doesn't seem like it was that long ago we were it wasn't you know talking about like oh it's coming but yeah there's probably still some jobs out where you don't need automation and that now you look around it's just like automation automation automation yeah i think i think for me to like the big the big pain is when you're a jack of all trades is or at least in my company um i have to do support and i have to do projects so it's like while i'm trying to do project work if something breaks okay now i've got to stop my project work and i got to take on support work right and then i've got to sit there and because you know sometimes it takes it takes an hour it might take two hours to figure out an issue right so there's no tier one right then there's there's no knocks yeah no no now we have a we have a help desk but pretty much all they do is kick it to you uh yeah i mean they they take the they take the customer call and then um or you know client whatever you want to call them uh they take their call and they turn it into a ticket and then they just forward it over to us and then we have to support that's that doesn't even sound like a help desk that sounds like an answering service right it sounds like a call center to me yeah yeah like it it seems like those folks should have like a playbook of like you know the common issues that come up no matter i think complex it is like if it's a common issue and there's like a set fix to it like you know have have a document that walks you through how to fix it and i think they do some stuff like you know like if a user can't figure out their password they can reset it for them that kind of stuff but when it comes to networking stuff they don't do anything uh to troubleshoot they just pass on the information obviously i was working on that in the way end because we were getting paged for everything and i wanted i wanted to come up with some kind of script they could run to basically do all the checks i do every time i get a call you know look at the aggregation i already have routes in the routes out can you ping both sides like you know if if you get through all that and this stuff doesn't work give us a call but these are the 10 things you should check before you call somebody you know that's yeah so is your company like do you feel like it's small enough and the network small enough that they don't need dedicated support like is it i think we're getting to the point i think it's we've ran so lean for so long yeah that they're like well why would we hire someone else because it's working right like they're right yeah but but they don't take care of everything we don't need anybody else and everybody's running as lean as they can i mean even the place yeah they're they're not backfilling and they're you know their automation's going to solve all the problems like well and so for our team we've we got two new network people right we got two new network engineers and they're one of them he's pretty fresh and the other one she's she's pretty good uh she's she's got um quite a bit of like you know firewall experience and stuff like that so she can she can hold her own for sure so what i've been doing is uh trying to push when i get certain calls and whatnot because i think it's also a good learning experience right trying to troubleshoot stuff at least it was for me i think so what i so what i'm trying to do is like hey when a certain call comes in and it's like hey this isn't working right i'll be like push that over to one of them and let them try to troubleshoot it that way they can learn our network you know and just get better with how our setup is so i i i've been getting better about pushing um troubleshooting and and support that kind of stuff to the newer people so that they can get a better grasp on how our network works um so that's that's been helpful that's right it's a good way to learn kind of get thrown in there yeah but accountability like oh god they think i got to fix this like yeah you know but suppose the problem is is right but the problem is is like we're not tiered right we're all kind of the same level yeah i guess you want to say yeah and so it kind of feels weird maybe in like hey can we all do this you know because it's like i'm not a i'm not a tear above them or anything like that it's does that make sense yeah yeah and it's kind of a double-edged sword damn because i guess if you were in a gigantic company you'd be buffered there'd be tears there'd be a knock you're going to be getting all those calls and you'd be able to maybe focus more on project work but you might be siloed because it's so big and everything you know maybe a middle range is like better for somebody who wants to get their hands in everything but not be you know pushed out to some kind of silo yeah so is that like is it you and the other two that just do networking yeah we have well there's and there's one other guy uh i think he's he's almost out the door though he he's about to retire he's been there for uh probably like 35 years or something like that i mean maybe this is just the manager in me but i'm i'm feeling like maybe you're you're the networking lead and then you do have the buffer like then you do have the you know authority to be like hey you guys like do the tickets while i do the project work kind of thing well hey if you want to give me that title i mean dan you've told me on the side some of the stuff you're doing you sound like an architect to me you know and uh definitely an architect for your your business for sure yeah i mean you can't do business so well and you're designing solutions you know the needs like you know you're yeah and and so they have recently started a art team like an architecture review team and um uh they put me on that so nice but i don't have the title yet or anything like that and and i don't really see myself as an architect just because of my knowledge level i love blessings maybe maybe for my company i could definitely be an architect in that in that sense but that's what we're talking about right yeah the size of your company your familiarity with like maybe you wouldn't be an architect where i'm at but right you're at you are and once you have that title yeah you're an architect you know if you go to a mega company they're not going to you're just an architect they're not going to know like oh he's not an artist the very first thing in the interview all right listen guys i know my title says architect but at this place i might be a junior network engineer i don't know like we'll see i used to joke when i when i first became a network engineer at the knock because i couldn't believe engineer was in my job title because i can barely multiply i'm like i'm not i'm not a real engineer like there's people building bridges and skyscrapers like you know i yeah i play with packets there you go kind of kind of engineering i i feel like i'm starting to get a little bit more closer to where i want to be in the sense of letting uh the newer people kind of do more the support stuff and then let me work on or focus on project work and like bringing in new solutions and stuff how to because one thing i'll say i think uh you know completely for a person who is wears a lot of hats and stuff i see the bigger picture of our company right when it comes to the uh the network and and the different technologies that they're trying to use for the business side i i definitely understand the bigger picture now because of you know dealing with so many different things and do you keep your eyes on what's coming to dan like down the road yeah yeah i mean that sounds like yeah we've i've been like like when you know aws and azure and all that got real big i we we were jumping into it and just kind of you know playing around seeing what we could do and did you build all that like you were responsible for it was me and uh one of our systems guys but he did more of the actual cloud work and whatnot but i i did the like you know building the tunnels between us and the cloud and that kind of stuff uh when it comes like the networking side and stuff i'll do i'll do some of that stuff kind of what i'm going to like building tunnels and doing routing in and out but then there's other heavy hitters who deal right deal on the cloud end so if you guys were like hiring somebody would you want the jack of all trades like was that what you would look for if you didn't say it out loud like that's what you want yeah so i i will say this i think there's been plenty of time past uh since we did the interview process uh i did find this one guy right and he sounded like a super strong route switch guy but he had never touched anything cloud never touched anything load balancers firewalls he never touched any of that he was strictly a route switch guy and we passed on him because he just he didn't have any experience in anything else and uh now were you able to find somebody that because in my mind as you're talking i almost wanted to interrupt and finish the sentence in my mind if he's a strong route switch guy you can teach him all that other stuff now you may not have the cycles or the time to teach him and if you can find somebody who knows it all your life is easier so that makes sense yeah and your networks may not be so big where you could really keep a strictly route switch person busy all day like exactly and that's and that's how our network is right there but that's that's the indication of where the the the career path is going right like route switch isn't enough anymore a strong route switch guy five years ago you probably would have grabbed them i'm guessing i mean i don't know your environment but yeah when i got into networking not that long ago yeah man route switch if you're good at it you got a job you'll always have a job now you got a strong route switch guy it's like well sorry buddy you know you don't know that eight other technology stacks are running here so and you probably found somebody who did know what you needed right yeah yeah we the one of the guy the new guy he um he had messed with uh cisco meraki and we had a huge project meraki project going through at the time right before we hired that person and so that's really what i was looking for was someone that had good meraki background and this guy didn't have it he never logged into the dashboard or anything so was that your big project coming up because you got me thinking like if you're a rat switch guy but you have one like if he was good with meraki would that have changed your mind like if that was your next big project coming up right he might not have to know all the other stuff but like oh yeah so you need it's been my takeaway from the past couple years looking at my career watching my skills become outdated is you need something besides round switch pick something you know we'll look at it firewalls cloud automation pick something yeah well look at it this way so let's say um let's let's say that guy did have good meraki right yeah he had some uh or well let me back up if if you find yourself in a situation where you can jump into a company that has a major project coming up i feel like that's a good first start right there right because then you jump on board and you're and you're like thrown into the deep end on a particular product with whatever projects going on and then at that point i feel like that sets you up for maybe if you want to go get a better paycheck right and you want to jump jobs uh go find another job that has another project coming up or i don't know i i just feel like if you first if you're getting started out i feel like that's a good experience to getting into getting experience right uh i just i don't know that's how i kind of think of it but and this just popped in my head so my wife is in marketing she works for a software company but she's in marketing not not what we do but um she just started passively looking because she's been where she's at for about a decade and she feels that her skill set is becoming outdated that she's not getting the touch all the new things she needs to and she's look you know for a while it's been okay because she's you know she's mom and the kid's sick she picks them up she's here like she liked being able to be more involved at home so her job probably wasn't as challenging as she could handle but now she's looking ahead and thinking like well five years from now you know i might not have the skill set i need so she kind of sees where her industry's going and where she's at isn't allowing her to vary that skill set and become you know a wider base of of skills so it's kind of interesting how just seeing it even in a marketing role you don't want to be silent you don't want to be good at one thing because it's a matter of time until i mean especially with she's at a technology company but the the rate at which everything changes you know whether you're an engineer in marketing like you you got to stay skilled up because you're going to be outdated well and i think that kind of goes to my point right so like if if someone if someone's looking to get in this field right and and they do find themselves in a job where they're siloed like let's let's use the meraki for experience or for example right uh let's say hey we're looking for someone we're about to jump into this big meraki project and you get you get the job but all you do is meraki right well you can take that project let's say it's a year-long project or whatever get super deep with the meraki you've deployed it at hundreds of sites you know you've got that experience now right well then go to your next thing right don't don't stay stuck in a meraki position yeah go go on to the next thing and if i guess that what i'm saying is that's if you've only are finding siloed jobs right you know for me one of the reasons why i've stayed where i'm at uh for as long as i have is because we keep bringing in new stuff and so i get to learn new stuff it's it's not like i'm sitting at the exact same equipment you're not getting stale at all exactly and and that's because and it's kind of funny because almost every time that i get ready where i'm like you know what i'm not really learning anything new i'm kind of getting tired of this that's the curse maybe i should go start looking yeah yeah yeah but maybe maybe i'm ready to go you know somewhere else to learn something new then all of a sudden they're like hey all of a sudden we're going to open up the wallet and we're going to get a bunch of stuff and so it's like all right here we go they read your mind you just made me think of something dan as you were talking i think that being siloed might be a choice because even when i was siloed in the wan there was this gigantic land team that was doing all kinds of cool stuff but i could have easily applied to one of those jobs i had a good relationship with those managers i knew a lot of the guys like i could have jumped over and varied my skill set and and learned you know that side of the house but i was comfortable and so it it's all in my experience it was almost like being siloed eventually became a choice it wasn't in the beginning it's the job i got but you know years go by and you're comfortable and you know i was less and less challenged and that was kind of okay for a while but i think that really depends on where you're at in your life right like there are some days where where i welcome like the challenges and and learning new stuff and there are some days where man wouldn't it be nice to just mow the lawn and ride on a tractor like like bars you know like yeah there's definitely been some days where i'm just like yeah why did i do this but but not not in such a bad way that i like regret it it's just like you know there are just some times where it can feel i don't i don't feel like overwhelming is the right term but yeah i don't know it's just always great i feel like right yeah yeah totally you see people coasting and you're like man that looks nice but then the people that are coasting are like man i got to do something here so yeah it's just like the human condition it would be nice to to have the opportunity to coast once in a while for a little bit right um but yeah like i definitely couldn't see myself coasting for a very long time that's just not i'm at the wrong company to coast i don't know if i can find a place that'll pay me more and let me coast but i i don't know the the rate of change has just picked up in technology it seems like there's just two there's so many things going on how could you possibly just you know rolling all the stuff out even in smaller companies like you said dan every time you turn around you open up the wall let's deploy this thing and then you got to figure all that out it's a good thing because you're getting skilled up and you know yeah you're broadening your base but yeah it gets kind of tiring after a while i'm a little yeah i definitely suffer burnout you know at work um there there will be seasons of the year where you know what i'm getting out of work at 4 30 on the dot and i'm not looking back you know until until 8 am the next day and then there's like right now where i'm at uh you know pretty much every night i've been looking at something at work um are you on call a lot like you get called a lot well technically we're on call 24 7 where i work but do you rotate with you know your team a couple you don't rotate so everybody's on call all the time yeah pretty much but but the good thing is is like it used to be a pain in the rear uh back in like way back in the day when we had kind of like shitty gear and as we've upgraded we've made things more redundant we've made things you know more more resilient and whatnot and uh the technology's gotten better and yeah we've gotten away from a lot of our legacy stuff and with that it's made my life after work much better because knock on wood i don't get called that much so it's yeah i used to work at a place like that like when i first got there the it systems and stuff were in such shambles like it was a very responsive environment and and through like education of management and taking care of issues we were just like able to make some appropriate investments and kind of turn that reactive environment into a proactive environment so we were scheduling the downtime doing the maintenance and that way we didn't get the you know unscheduled maintenance windows popping up all over the place exactly and that's something like anybody that's listening that's interested in this kind of stuff uh if you put in the time to make sure that you're moving forward or moving towards uh a more redundant network like that makes all the difference right there i i i worked really hard as we started getting you know new products in and stuff but like and sometimes when you're in a smaller uh environment smaller network they can't they don't just buy everything that you want right like you gotta there's a balance there and like one of the things they they never bought uh dual power supplies for anything that we we ever purchased you know stuff like that little things like that or they might only have one device that does a certain job right instead of having two devices that are in a you know h a pair of some sort and so as we moved along i've always tried to include that in in whatever design that we put together and luckily they've bit right they they they purchased it and they put it and they allowed us to put it in place and all that and it's made my life my home life much better because of that did you have to sell it as like hey you spend this money we'll have increased uptime yeah oh yeah yeah for sure uh but the way i look at it is i that sounded very selfish how i said that it made my life easier but it makes it makes their life easier too because guess what uh when when things went down the business side saw that right and they're in after a while it's like what are you guys doing over there why is it why are we having issues every single day or you know whatever and and so eventually now they're like oh okay so we spent a little bit extra money but guess what our systems don't go down all the time and uh so it it was hard to sell at first but then it's like they started seeing the the light at the end of the tunnel there and so now pretty much everything we get we get some kind of redundancy built in with it have you ever had an outage and discovered that your redundancy wasn't as redundant as you thought it was like we used we used to you know we we had everything dual homed and we'd have a failover and some stuff would go down and you'd find out that there was like the prefix lists were mismatched you know like uh somebody added it in the a side but not the b side like yeah so these five clients are down like come on guys like put it in both some of the legacy stuff still is like that yeah but for the most part yeah everything that's major uh is redundant because like when i started there we only had a single core switch and like everything was ran to it yeah so is that switch sitting behind you in that rack of gear now it might be oh sorry we cut that out my bad yeah i know it's all good yeah don't you love taking trophies like that home it might be it might be right there your bosses listen to this show how did you get that 250 pound chassis out with anybody seeing it no they they they scrapped it to me yeah that's nice that's good yeah no it's yeah that was interesting putting that in my car people are like i had to take two of us to carry it out you know what what is that six forty five hundred sixty yeah forty five all right forty five ten yeah i took a few of those out in the last couple weeks yeah so i guess the advice we'd be giving people right is have a varied skill set i mean even look at the new blueprint for the ccna mm-hmm you know they're adding it's all over the virtualization there's automation in there wireless there's vxlan there's wireless like the industry i'm not saying cisco search but you know it's tied to the industry right they've they questioned leaders and what do you want out of you know your people that come out certified and i feel like it's varied right i think it's important to say that it's not just cisco that does it right yeah we often you know go straight to cisco about a lot of certifications and stuff like that and they're obviously you know one of the bigger names in our particular industry but if i think if you look across the board a lot of certifications are like that right because that's that's the skill set that's people want you know these these days um i i'm not necessarily for or against you know being siloed versus the jack of all trades i think that's a very much a personal preference thing my recommendation based on my personal experience is spend some time being the jack of all trades before you decide to go silo because i think that having a little bit of experience in in everything will help you when you do decide to become a more focused uh you know engineer or i.t professional i can tell you the firewall guys i know that are siloed they were all out switch guys you know they were they were net engines like us and then they got into security like oh this is cool now that's their specialty they can route switch but they you know they found security to be interesting i i think it would be hard to i mean i can't you know say this from experience right because i've never been a security engineer but i have to imagine it would hard to be a security engineer without having a good foundation in round switching you'd have to yeah they're rounding and then you know i think everything comes back to securing right now you're securing it yeah and i'll be honest with you i've always been interested in it and i always because they're these mysterious devices i can't see i can't access and i know how important they are you know securing the infrastructure so i i've been you know talking to our security guys as much as possible and then you know for jeff that we just interviewed like now i'm really interested to you know he's going to try to help me out and learn a little bit about security because i you know i think it's pretty cool that's just one more you know piece of gear in line in the path that you know you can get comfortable with i don't want it to be this mysterious box i know nothing about you know i i don't know if i would want to be a security person because it's like security is always you know from a management perspective uh at least in in my experience they management looks at you and says you know tell me i'm secure yeah and it's just like well i i can't do that you know like attacks are evolving just as much as the technology is and you know you might think you're completely secure and then you know something slips through and it's like oh shit i didn't think about that right yeah uh and so it's i think i think it's really hard to put like a really solid number on like how secure you know you think you are i would guess they do what they can and you can always push back well if you want to spend enough money we can secure the hell out of this place but the more secure you are the less access stuff you have like they've been oh yeah we've been locking a lot of stuff down and i understand why but it makes my job harder and harder more more and more authentication more more ifas like just i can get to less stuff now you know i i used to have admin rights on my laptop for years now you know nobody does they took it away company-wide one night wow yeah yeah and you can't get it back and i can't do anything now so every everything i have to i sound like i'm beating up on my company i'm not but now if you want to do anything and you need admin elevated privileges to do it you know you're 45 minutes you've got to get it approved you're on with help desk for at least an hour yeah they got to give you the elevated privilege to so you know there's always that piece of software i know it's not the security epi episode but yeah the more secure the environment the tougher it is to get anything done yeah thanks security brand at places i've worked uh we used to give elevated privileges to certain users and just it was under the expressed consent of look we're going to give you this if you screw something up yeah we are not going to attempt to recover it we are just going to re-image it and hand it back to you understand are we good here well and there's irony in taking away admin rights to somebody like me because i have god rights to every network device in the company right like yeah but i think that i could bring the data center down if i wanted to but i can't you know and stop installing i can't install firefox update on my laptop i mean i have to standpoint because then they're gonna use your creds right yeah right something was to get your creds locally i get it but when it first happened i'm like really i i run a global network and i can't update firefox like yeah okay you know what those little things that come up it just seems so whatever you want man keep signing my check do what you got to do man it's all good yeah i find that funny because i i have been in that position as a contractor for these other organizations right like you know some security is such that you're given a laptop you know to use when you connect to certain customer environments and just like you said you know i had i have god rights on every router and switch and maybe every firewall in the organization but i can't install putty on the laptop i was just talking yeah exactly right they're like if you can't connect you can't uh interesting or i would be interested in hearing from someone who is a siloed network engineer on like you know what do they love about their job and everything like that i i think that'd be a different perspective that i have not seen yet because i say like you know i don't i i wouldn't want to be silent but i've know i've also never been silent so i don't know maybe i would like it the only thing i can tell you from my experience is i like being that big fish in a little pond i like knowing what i was doing i like not being thrown for a lot of curveballs and i could maybe mow the lawn one day at lunch because there's a rhythm to you know yeah a job like that you you know when things break you know when projects come you know when you can take a breather you see the pro you know when you're doing a little bit everything i haven't found the rhythm yet i don't think there's a rhythm yeah right right yeah but you know it's kind of like what aj or i think it was aj that were you just saying aj about um you don't go to work with a plan anymore no no i don't yeah exactly that's that's how my day is like if i go in it's it's like all right i i'll have one thing because i used to like try to plan it all out right like i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this after lunch and then i'm gonna do this right before i leave whatever and now i'm just like okay if i just get the one thing done i will be happy like i don't care what time of the year it is you're right dan i try to i try to block my time in outlook so all the stuff i got to do i block it out and that's how i track my time and invariably no it just gets pushed from monday to tuesday half of it winds up in friday because i'm like i didn't get to it you know i tried i literally had these days where like i i used to have this like 45 minute commute so i'd be like driving like okay this is when i get there i'm gonna go do this i'm gonna work on these issues and i'd sit down on my desk after i get into work and another server crashes and the entire day is just you know sent sailing because now i'm working on something else that i had no intention of touching you've got to be flexible in tech yeah you just yeah yeah you can't be rigid you'll be miserable very rigid it's got to go with the flow right so that definitely just keep a punch list of the stuff you want to get done and you know if you get to it great if not you're adding to the punch list vary your skill set go with the flow don't be siloed learn animation personal choice if you if you if you have to function with rhythm you know maybe maybe the silo is the way for you but i i would like to hear that from somebody else though that i that is siloed currently um yeah yeah i've definitely seen situations too where like certain people are good with tasks and they get opportunities to focus on that task like they start it and they can finish it and then they can move on to the next one like help desk tickets or something like that they don't do well however when they are interrupted on said task and they have to like bounce around and handle like multiple tasks at once so you know honest moment i love the former and not the latter in my old job yes i had focus tasks and i had hours of uninterrupted time to work through them and i really enjoy that and i'm adjusting to this new world apparently everybody else you know lives in we're just anything could change yeah you know right anything can change at any moment and you just gotta it's been an adjustment for me because i've been doing the opposite for five years yeah but you know it's almost like i'm back in the knock man any given moment the the building could burn down around me and i just gotta you know i was hoping the further along in my career i got the more chill it would get but yeah right that hasn't happened well yeah which is fine it's interesting excellent well uh thanks fellas for sharing your thoughts on siloed versus not silent again i don't i don't think we're trying to espouse that one's better than the other i think it's just there's different experiences right right uh it sounds like we've all had an opportunity to be siloed and be the jack of all trades and we certainly have our preferences and hopefully you got a little something out of this one any any parting thoughts before we head off uh andy uh i don't want the listeners that are listening to forget the fact that you both said you wouldn't hire a siloed one man you know the person you would hire i mean really that's where the rubber meets the road so i you know my experience in the market and what you guys have said and what technology companies are doing you know who's just doing one thing so i would think i would i would think that a varied skill set you know in anything if you take a car to the mechanic and you need brakes and he doesn't do brakes it's not really all that helpful you want somebody who can do everything on a car so if you're going to be a network guy you're going to need to know more than route switch you know whether you're using the certification tracks as a gauge or whether you're using you know the job descriptions you see none of them just say proficiency in eigrp that's it we'll pay 80 grand like they're just right nobody's looking for that so well just a little asterisk on that though the guy that i was interviewing just happened to be soloed in something that i wasn't interested in or that i was needing so right if you had been siloed in meraki you know that it might have been a different story yeah so just just throwing that out there that may you know sometimes being siloed in something uh might not be the end of the world right that's true yeah my final thought is i'm glad that i'm now in a position where i'm learning new things and varying my skill set and it's harder it's more stressful it's not my perfect you know psychological environment to be in but you know like anything i'm adjusting and it's my new normal and you know i i i think career-wise it's it's a good move personally excellent dan any uh closing thoughts parting shots squirrel no i think just kind of what andy said uh but i i mean i think it is personal choice though i i i personally think that being a jack of all trades i get to dabble a little here a little bit there and and so if i was in an interview right and someone brought up something about f5 well it's like oh well actually i also have done that i might not be a master at it but i know what they're talking about when they start describing you know snats and uh pool members and all this stuff it's not just going to go over my head right and so i i don't know i i personally believe that being a jack of all trades is better but dude here's the thing i've also worked with engineers who only work on vpn stuff right and they're freaking rock stars at it and it's nice because they know what they're talking about in depth and it's like okay okay hold on let me let me check the logs on my side uh oh yeah mine says that too what is that what does that mean again you know so there there's two there's like i said it's a double-sided sword uh well and dan you keep saying stuff that we're trying to wrap up here but when i call tack and i need an expert exactly there you go on nexus they send me a neck success bird if i'm on an asr these you know an ios xe expert so yep yeah there's definitely places for best you know specific knowledge sets yeah but absolutely yeah i just you know this episode's been more about my experience and it's been a jack-of-all-trades so i guess that's why i just i align with it more i don't know about you aj what are your parting thoughts yeah i like that i'm a jack of all trades in my silo now right like i i i focus on networking but i'm not just like a route switch guy i'm not just a wireless guy like i i get to do a lot of the emerging tech i i do you know working on a vxlan project i get to do sd-wan i get to do aci i get to do automation so uh i'm i'm really enjoying that and it it definitely beats the one day i'm going to touch sql the next day when i do networking the next day it's going to be exchanged for sure so uh it's it's a little bit more focused but i still get a lot more options and i i'm always learning something new and i'm having a good time doing it awesome well thank you guys uh i i will drop a little hint it sounds like we got a big guest on the next uh episode so you'll definitely want to tune back in for that i'm not gonna name any names but uh you'll want to tune in tune in for next week's episode i will be out next week shortly after that so enjoy this one uh and then enjoy our special guest next week thanks guys have a great day night wherever you happen to be see ya 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 art of network engineering.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