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 actually hold up welcome to the art of network sales engineering i am your host aaron hello i'm only one of three on our lovely panel this evening with me i have daniel howdy packet richards how are you sir howdy doing good yourself i'm well thank you it's actually raining here in san diego which is like a total freak out moment for absolutely everybody here trust me it's like it's like an apocalypse so other than that yeah i'm cool um and andrew how are you sir i'm i'm better now this is this is a highlight of my week as i said before does it not rain in san diego often is that like a weird thing no like never yeah i mean i want i don't know the exact numbers but maybe like 15 to 20 times a year wow if i had to get y'all know how to drive and ring no absolutely not why are we all not living in san diego i'm still trying to figure out why i'm here i mean it was 70 degrees and beautiful today but dude it's a rarity lately i was talking to my mom the other day on the phone and i will just get off on attention but i think this is career related because i think it's a big deal and i was asking my mom like i don't know for some my dad just retired and he's just been working forever like he should have retired years ago but he's like i'm just gonna keep working because that's what i do but i was asking her like because it just hit me all at once i was like what is it you're you go to work for this is what i don't understand like why are you going to work i get it you have to feed yourself right but like but like what else and the only other thing that i could think of can i guess yeah go ahead health insurance okay that's fair yeah it's expensive i don't die yeah well it's expensive yeah even when you do go to work it's still dancing uh um but yeah i was like i was like hey what are you actually gonna work for my mom's like i don't know because clearly she knows me she thinks it's like a trick question i'm like no i'm serious like i don't i don't know because everybody i know that does not live here is always like oh isn't it expensive and expensive i'm like yeah but quite honestly what else am i going to spend my money on you know what i mean so i just i try to increase my earnings and spend it on perfect weather right like why not yeah that's exactly that's exactly what i did and i watch you guys ever watch like hdtv where uh like my wife and my wife and i do every night where it's uh we like we like to watch the the show the house hunter show where they go overseas and it's always people and they're always retiring and then moving to like columbia or you know somewhere in central america where it's like really cheap and you get the great weather and stuff and i'm like man what if they knew that you didn't have to wait until you retired to do that you know what i'm and i'm not talking smack on other parts of the country because i've i've lived on basically all four corners of our country i think people live where they live to be with their family of origin the only reason i'm in pennsylvania is yeah yes that's where your family is if i didn't have family here i'd probably bowled out to san diego and get some of that sunshine i followed my wife to new jersey trust me there's no reason to move oh and by the way we have a fourth person on the panel his name is jeff clark he's a fortinet sc jeff nice to meet you how are you doing that's sir i know i've just felt like i was just watching no no you're you're right on the money you know it and that actually told a lot about you as a person and actually inadvertently told a lot about why you have the job you have which is a sales engineer so if first of all where do you live jeff so we get that you said new jersey yeah but there's a better way to say that we say we live just outside of philadelphia okay that's the better way to say i live in new jersey if anyone ever tells you they live just outside of philadelphia they live in new jersey all right that's fair i'll hey i don't know anything so i'll just stay here yeah i mean yeah dan and i are clueless so so jeff real quickly uh do you mind saying where you work no i i mean i've got a yeah i know you're you're on an audio podcast so it's yeah right that our fortinet hat got my you know fortinet cup i tried to intentionally turn the thing so it wasn't looking like it was realizing too much tell me about it tell me about the camper yeah and i have uh well so fortinet everyone makes fun of the naming convention here at fortinet because everything's fortified everything's florida yeah it's like mcdonald's like mick whatever yeah and it's it's one of those things where we get on the phone with a customer like oh man you guys name everything for that like this there's no way you can make fun of it more than we do you're like hey bro just pay your ford a bill and shut up so uh i got the ford camper uh is when covet hit i knew i was gonna be working from home i knew my kids were gonna be home i knew my wife was gonna be home and i knew i was going to be on calls all day long and eric you can relate to this we have heard you talk on other episodes about being in a small space and it's just it's horrible rough so um just before covet hit when i knew the kids were coming home i went out bought a 29-foot travel trailer for like three grand off some dude which is crazy because now it's worth like eight grand the only time it is nice travel trailers have gone up in uh value is during covid but bought this thing set it up as my office i've got my server closet is the old tv cabinet where everything is supposed to sit oh tight yeah so so you have a whole stack of ford nigerian that would basically make most enterprises foam at the mouth when they saw it right well so this will make andy mad most of my labs are virtual it is not because i don't agree with him that a physical lab is from a learning experience better but i mean you know this aaron is an essie you're building and tearing your lab apart right almost on a daily basis jeff i was laughing i was slapping ospf this morning i was in a virtual lab it's okay okay see yeah there's an ease part of it i think andy's big big thing is like look you need to have at least experience knowing how to plug things in and you know what i mean seeing a rack for the first time those are all good soft skills so basically the number of problems that are layer one yeah and and what i would call layer zero too which is like the person's brain so jeff jeff what is your title and tell us what the heck that even means so i am a fortinet essie which can be depending on who you ask it could be systems engineer or sales engineer and uh basically what that role is uh the way i describe it to my wife when she asks what i do constantly is um i'm the nerd that would talk to your nerd if you owned a company to talk to them about our nerd products okay that's what affordance sc does or that's what an se in general does is they're the ones that that from the sales perspective uh talk about the technical stuff uh we're the ones that figure out you know how are we gonna meet a customer's needs do we meet a customer's needs you know we explain products that we have and do a lot of demos we do a lot of proof of concepts lab stuff up and then we're part of the account management team at least here at fortinet afterward there are some companies where the se is pre-sales only we are mostly pre-sales uh but we are still part of the account management team after the sale is done so okay i talk to customers every day that are existing customers and have florida stuff sort of stuff wow yeah that's so you you haven't always been uh this illustrious sales engineer and i don't want to go too far into it because andy on his youtube channel has a full-blown interview that where you give out your your entire life story so if you guys want to check that out if you all want to check that out go check out andy's youtube page and you can see every last little bit of of jeff over there but just just kind of give us the cliff notes version of because before we got actually hit record tonight um andy was alluding to that you haven't always been in the uh the not just in the se role of course but in the industry period so maybe talk to us about what you did before that and then the pivot why the pivot and then how you ended up at fortinet yeah so if we go back i i actually was kind of a late bloomer in it i didn't get started in any form of i.t until around 2010. i was previously in mostly sales jobs i did door-to-door sales selling books at one point i worked on a dairy milking cows and then um i think we did by blushing um and then i got it and he lives in a camper so much in common um and then what i thought was going to end up being a career because it paid well was i got into the mortgage industry i started selling mortgages and that went really well but i got into it in about 2006 uh-oh 2008 oh yeah yeah everything crashed no more held on for about six months and um found myself in a place where there was there was no work and i went from making you know a six-figure income to nothing and um so it's weird the way i got into it i've always been technical i've always i was the family i.t guy for years right and um yeah i got in tait because my dad didn't know how to work stuff but he really liked gadgets and so he'd buy that new thing and be like that's broken and he'd throw it down and i'd go pick it up i'd read the manual as you guys have alluded to in the past and so i'd read the manual i'd figure out how it worked and i'd teach him how it worked so i was probably an se at the age of seven i don't think about it um so anyway i got a out of the mortgage business and didn't know what to do with my life i had no idea and a friend of mine started taking who had also been in the mortgage industry trying to take taking these classes in network engineering and i remember thinking what an incredibly boring thing and um you're not man it's so cool because you got to come you got to come get into this so uh i went to a ccna class he was taking and i showed up on the night they were doing subnetting and it was weird i'm sitting there most people just completely hate subnetting but i sat there on that night and suddenly it clicked that a subnet mask could be something other than 255 255 255.00 and i suddenly understood what it was and i was hooked i signed up for the class i signed up to take the ccna classes that night took the cc ent or the netplus first then got into the ccna and then um realized that now i have certs yeah i gotta kick the search eventually pass after failing the first time then i realized that you can have search and that gets you an interview but if you have no experience you can't get the job which is really frustrating because the job is the only way to get the experience yes yes so what i did was i went and started a podcast okay and i started this was i think talked about in uh in the last episode uh when you were talking about tim uh talking to tim and he was talking about technical interviews um i started a podcast called tech tip tuesday and the whole premise of it was a three to five minute video on something on the internet something on the iphone some app whatever and it had to be so simple that my mom could understand it and then i put that on my resume and i started repairing iphones and fixing people's computers and making you know 20 bucks here 20 bucks there and i got an interview with a managed services provider a small msp and they offered me a job because i did a podcast because they wanted to do a podcast so i talked about technology without having any technology experience and landed my first tech job and so you you put i want to back up you you put because i've mentioned this before i think we all have at some point and maybe not directly a podcast but like even in the home lab put that on your resume like you did it it like the resume just doesn't have to be like exp work experience but even though that that is because like if you get paid to do something that's work right like that's like that's actually the definition i think of a professional right if you get paid to do something does that make you a pro yeah right like if you don't get paid and you still put it on your resume they don't ask you if you got paid right of course well that's i don't mean that's the only criteria but yeah the point is like if you did it put it on their resume right and for you it's like let me just do some i mean that's that was just a a long shot it must have felt like a long shot like let me just try this right and look look what happened right so i guess my point is if you have an idea of something that you might want to put on your resume that you've done that's going to make you stand out from other people do not hesitate to put it on there the worst thing that they're going to do is go hey why did you put this on there but i can guarantee you no recruiters going to go why'd you put this on here you know what i mean they're looking for everything that you've done so you know be proud of yourself right yeah yeah exactly put your stuff out we're making youtube videos right jeff yeah i mean i was also putting them on on uh apple they were on okay the actual uh they were posted everywhere you could do podcasts and i i ended up i ended up somehow getting featured as an apple featured podcast and my viewership went from like 200 to like 10 000 viewers in a week can you tell us how to do that no idea and i wasn't even really trying to make a podcast when i started i was just trying to send friends and family videos on how to do stuff so they stopped calling me and then it turned into a podcast because they kept forwarding it and i was putting them up on youtube anyway so then i you know starting got a web page and is that how this company heard about you that hired you the msp did they hear the podcast no i was applying everywhere yeah because that if there's anything i can tell anybody who's a new network engineer the hardest part of network engineering is getting the first job once you have the first job it becomes easier and easier to get a job because you begin to know people and those people will move to other companies and then they'll tell you about a position that opens up and now your resume's got experience so that the hardest thing i mean it's not subnetting it's not mpls it's not bgp it's getting the first damn job right so i got that a little a little unconventional of course but i i don't i think we've grown to find that they're the unconventional is conventional i mean everybody has some kind of weird story like that right like i especially love the the pivot moves right like you pivoted you you randomly found yourself and this is actually the best part of your story is the fact that you walked in on probably what i think every one of our peers would say to this day was probably the worst possible time you could have walked in that room when they were doing subnetting because there is no easier way to turn most people off you know what i mean like and it sounds like you got it pretty quickly i was not one of those people i mean i'm talking days like what does it all mean they're giving me like guys drawing a piece of a pie and he's like well then this and then this and then you're on this side and then and i'm like what no where's the pie coming who's making the pie i almost quit over subnetting same dude i couldn't handle it it wasn't i couldn't handle it so see i can't remember names i can't remember yeah the only thing i can remember and the only things that really work for me in my head is numbers so if all of you had a number i'd had i've had everybody's name memorized so subnetting with numbers just it it resonated with me for some reason in that class not only that but the teacher was dual ccie really smart dude but more importantly really good at um yeah he was great he was a great teacher and so that made yeah that made something more comfortable because it's so it's such a foreign concept and you don't know anything about it exactly it generally is that's what i mean yeah yeah so jeff you don't you don't like dns then is that kind of what you're getting at who's saying that me no i'm not saying that it's just not as good as ip addresses he's the only person that types ip addresses his web browser yeah come on the hard way so that's your first job yeah yeah so you're at the msp uh what what was the responsibility at the msp then so i had the role of a vcio or virtual chief information officer it is a role that not a lot of msps have but basically my job was to listen to people complain all day long about the lack of service they were getting from the support team oh yeah so i was it was it was oddly it was oddly se esque in but in the worst way possible um because i was technical and i was part of the sales team uh but they were they were they were not a well put together organization at the time i'm sure they're better now but um anyway so i got got to listen to a lot of complaining and so as soon as i got there i knew i wanted to get out but i i knew i wanted to get out before i even before i took the job that that was never the end goal for me that job was it was the only way i could get experience on my resume and so i don't think i ever took my my resume off the internet it was i was looking as soon as i got there so the friend that got me into networking ironically then landed a job at uh the place angela used to work which i think we can just say well i can say where i worked i'm not gonna say where andy did but uh at comcast so i got a job there at the knock uh well he got a job there at the knock and uh told me to apply and so i'm not i'm not a huge believer in certs but one of the things i do believe that certs are valuable for is getting you in front of people absolutely so he he got me the chance to at least talk to somebody there at comcast and uh i'm asking about it and he says you know the one thing you don't have is any juniper certs and comcast has got a lot of juniper stuff yeah and he says they want you to send your resume so i went on my resume and i lied and i said i had the jncia and then i went and i bought the jncia book and i knew my interview was in 10 days and i knew i wouldn't go to that interview if i didn't have the jncia so i studied my ass off for three days straight four days straight and then went and took the jncia and passed it when i went to the interview i did have the chance yeah attaboy atta boy yeah i like it well uh like uh speak it into fruition right yeah lie yourself into fruition yeah yes i have a junior person the next place i apply it i'm going to be like i got a ccie and i'm going to see what happens three days later get it before the interview right yeah that's the same it won't turn out so hot so you got you got the job at the comcast knock um andy's that we have a uh kind of a running tally of people that andy's worked with at the comcast knock but so so how long were you at the knock for i was there from i think 2013 to 2015 sounds about right uh i was looking at my resume because i figured this question might come up um yeah what's funny is i bombed that interview i did not deserve that i was going to ask you that i was going to ask you that jeff because i bombed the interview too yeah was it a rough technical interview for you it's a rough technical interview when you don't have any experience yeah yeah okay right and they ask you a networking question that is not something that you were prepared for and it doesn't matter what the question is if they ask you to access support in a trunk part if you're not ready for that question and you don't have experience that question is a daunting question 100 and i i've i'm a bad task taker and i've up until recently was a bad technical interviewer i really really struggled with technical interviews so yeah i bombed that interview and comcast pretty badly but luckily my friend there um he he was a rock star and so he vouched for me and um and they liked me as a person and i got the job yeah and um then the first thing i started doing was looking for ways that i could be different at comcast you know what's something i can do that no one else is doing and i i started doing automation before automation was talked about um and i i was i mean it wasn't anything great i was using excel and visual basic scripts to automate the creation of tickets you say it wasn't great but everybody there all three shifts and management thought it was magical and i still think it's magical because you say you saved so much time it used to take us 25 minutes to open one ticket that was horrible and your tool that you created broke it down to what 30 seconds maybe a minute yep wow yeah that was the power of automation use crazy yeah useful useful so let me ask you this did you henceforth put automation on your resume oh absolutely in fact but on the resume that you have what i created that took the ticket creation time from 15 minutes down to 30 you know 30 seconds because he's smart folks he's smart i think the important thing in this industry is is if you've ever had to interview somebody and last week's episode was a great episode where they were talking about the technical interviews you end up nothing you want nothing more than for that person to be successful on that interview you want them to be right right and and so if you can tell your story on your resume a little bit of something uh and then be prepared to take that interview and turn it into the thing where you're really successful at uh you're going to do really well in your interview so when they they're like you know what do you know about uh mpls and you're like nothing but can i tell you about you know this yeah if if you can figure out how to turn that conversation into your favor do the same thing with your resume tell your story and always be looking for the thing that makes you unique in a company yeah so it's not it's less like hey what you know they're focusing on like what you don't know you know putting like a red check mark next to it and it's more like more like glass half full situation looking at what you do know and and how much of it as opposed to yeah i asked like five questions that he had no idea about but i i he gave me like multiple alternatives to kind of at least see what he's made of right like that's i think that's good advice um yeah and that's kind of like what tim was saying like you know set it up to where the person can talk about something that they're really knowledgeable about and then and you kind of like let them take over that kind of let them be comfortable you know what i mean yeah and i just i i just want to point out that or draw this parallel between jeff and i when we left comcast when i left comcast there was no retention offers nobody was all that worried about it and when jeff's told him he was leaving it was a mad scramble to like oh my god who's going to maintain this ticket tool he created and it was like 24 7 jeff training the entire knock all three shifts on how to manage this automated toy creator dang that's awesome dude more importantly that shows how bad i am at programming but it was so confusing right yeah so but they're poorly documented someone has to take care of this it's supposed to be easy that's the whole point right so so you so when you did leave after you you know took the me and my scripts are leaving so when you when you when you left where did you where did you go now this two it's 2015 now at this point right yes yeah so that move was actually my probably my scariest move because at this point i had a job at comcast i had yeah i wasn't making great money but i was making it very comfortable yeah i was i was making enough money to feed the family complacent and um but i had i'd reached a point there where i would either move up or i needed to move out and there was a manager in a totally different department he and i were chatting one day and he said he said listen he says comcast is a great place to work he says but if you move up within an organization your pay increments are going to be based off of what you currently make he says if you move out because you're going to get in your career two to three major jumps in income he says i like having you here and i'd like to see you back here at comcast but i think dude instead of applying for the core you should get out okay can you get this guy can you give this guy our phone number like we need to talk to him because that that was a golden wisdom he'd be great here he's he's a he's a technical heavy hitter and a very smart guy that i mean that to me like i those are thoughts that are floating around in my head i just don't know how to articulate them and that was it right there and it's funny that you say that too because i was actually thinking earlier earlier today this is so weird i was thinking to myself like the best advice i would ever give somebody that was like that used to be a cable guy like me or is a current cable guy you know i would say move up to a position that you want within the company right because that's you need a springboard right you need like it's good to ha that's a good entry point because it's very easy to get into and it's also very easy to excel at so you can get you know to that next way but once you get to that next point you should bounce right because you should bounce with your new credentials you'll immediately like you just said i mean you can pick how much you want to make at that point because you don't have to accept anything that you don't want you know what i mean so so you could you could just see what's out there like you did like you were saying like i never even took my resume off the internet you know um but you know going going down that path it's like if i just find what i actually do want whether it's a little bit more a lot more or maybe just a company i want to work at and then lo and behold you can come back to the company that you left right especially left on good terms and yeah they're gonna look they're just gonna pay you what you're worth now you're like i don't know it doesn't matter what i left at right this is this but yeah you can't ignore how risky a move it was absolutely and how terrifying was you had a wife you had kids you had a mortgage and you had a job you'd never lose and this was a contractor gig yeah so i have a very similar to a contractor role yep and it was a contract to perm and so the technical interview this is i warned you about this andy before we started this it's good before we start the pocket go for it the technical interview was one of the most frustrating experiences because i'm already i'm at work i'm outside standing out there it's cold i'm out there with my phone kind of huddled in the corner so i'm not being seen by anybody ready to take this interview and um they get on it usually usually before an interview starts they want to know you know tell me about yourself tell me what you do all that they're like oh you know hey this is this person this person this person and uh this is uh jeff that we're interviewing here today and he currently is a doc engineer over at comcast jeff tell me how a trace route works and because i was outside i had my phone on mew and i said i hate interviews but my phone wasn't on mute and i looked back to go to unmute it to answer oh my god and there is i mean it's not even like i got laughter or anything like that i got silence dude i i'm cringing right now for you first question of the technical interview right yeah and tell me and the thing is it's not even it's not that it's a difficult question but it's not something where you're talking about incrementing ttls and you don't think about how a trace route works you think about what a trace route does why you would use a trace router i'm prepared for that but how does the trace route work it was just oh it's so frustrating and they did it was out of the gate so the rest of the interview i thought i did pretty terribly and i hang up and my phone rings half an hour later and it's the recruiter and he says you got the job whoa i said i said well i don't have the job i haven't even met these guys yet i said i want to go in there and talk to them in their office i want to meet these people i want to see where they work and so he's like but you got the job no i know but i want to go talk to them so he calls them up and they're like okay so i go in and now i'm interviewing them nice i'm sitting there chatting with them at uh first off uh one of the largest data centers in the one 401 north bride i was working for this was the company with sun guard availability services and it was an awesome place to go and work but it was it was a big data center intimidating as hell to go in there but i went in and i'm like i need to know i'm a contractor what are the chances of me become permanent what's everybody like here am i going to like this place because i got a pushy gig and free cable right and you know i was i was really nervous about it but i met those guys and what was funny is as soon as i walked in everybody comes running around like f-bomb f-bomb so your world i was noticing what i didn't know and he pulled up the chat while i'm sitting there after i agreed to accept the job after i interviewed them as i didn't realize this but he pulls up his computer and he turns it around and he shows me the chat history and the moment i dropped the f-bomb got an echo talking to me in the background sorry as soon as i uh he shows me his chat as soon as i dropped the f-bomb it says hired hired hired hired everybody in the chat wrote hired so i am wow saying that dropping an f-bomb no i don't think anybody i don't think anybody was in danger of copying that move at all actually so fast forward about three years been at sun guard for uh three years a great experience learned a ton um really really increased my network jobs and um i knew i want to get out of that job too though i wanted to get into this sc role that i have now because a friend of mine was an essie for fortinet yeah and um we're sitting there having beers one day sitting around the campfire uh got a fire pit out by my house and we're we're out there chatting and he's he's look i said you need to get out of this role you're in now because you got a good personality people like you you're technical he says there's this role i've got is i'm an essie and he said i'm going to tell you what i make and he told me what he made and i was like so what do you do again he started telling me about what he does in se and then when he's making for a living i'm like you've got to be freaking kidding me which of course i drop an f-bomb there too and um i'm like you've got you're kidding me man you can make that kind of money doing all the things that i already like doing and um so yeah because next time my job opens up apply so next time my job opened up i applied and i bombed that interview and i didn't drop an f-bomb which i probably should have right i got the job but the i i bombed it from the start i mean he is like what's the difference between a stateful and a stateless firewall like i don't know what those words mean man no idea what those words are nice i have been a network engineer i have not touched security i load the security guys uh i don't know but i want this job and uh he says so he like chatted for a good you know 15 20 minutes after that right and um i was like listen obviously i'm i'm probably not ready for this role i said well what do i need to do to be ready for this role because i want to work at fortinet yeah so hold on a second because this is interesting because like you you basically threw up the white flag and you would do you want to do what what most people would do after the fact all the all the while feeling what i would call like blissfully ignorant because the the most people's feelings i i always stress this like when they leave interviews that like you really don't know how it went i don't care how well or not well you thought i mean dude you dropped an f-bomb right so it's like you you just don't know unless you ask right yeah and i and i don't mean saying do you see it i hate i hate this quote do you see any reason why you wouldn't move forward with me like because people are gonna go no of course i don't and they're just gonna shove you off but you have to strategically ask that question and the question is not do you see anything that would prevent you from do because that's that's not that's not what you want what you want to know you want to know how the interview went right so why don't you just ask how the interview went right like hey well yeah but but you yeah but what i mean is like you you you often think you do and what your perception is is rarely anywhere near reality you know what i mean like and i'll give you an example you thought holy crap i dropped an f-bomb and then a half hour later the recruiter called you you know what i mean so like what i mean is like unless you know sure you don't right so just ask and don't and don't ask that that question that finds its way into every interview book on planet earth that says do you see any reason why you shouldn't because first of all on top of that everybody asks that anyway and they all read in a book somewhere or online and it's like what about 10 questions yeah what are my next steps what can we do next uh yes that's not what i sound like in interviews by the way um it's the first time i've heard this voicemail yeah it should be your new sound for all of us i don't know i felt appropriate we yeah so what did that do tell you how do you know what are you talking about so you told me he says look because you got to go get security experience he says and because you need to get some fortinet certificate certifications because you got to go get uh because nfc one yeah and is he two and go get your nse four he's in a c3 is just sales because you don't need that when he goes get one two four one and two are both free online go take him yep so by the way they're free online folks they are still free online go to the fortinet website look up the uh nse one two three it's super cool they have great videos they show you uh like good visuals what i mean is like because they're all like produced videos and like you could go and maybe we'll drop a link in the description if i remember to do so but uh but yeah the it's it's free that's the best part so to that point if you want to have some sort of security cert on your just like the juniper stuff was with the junos genius if you want that cert or at least something go get it it's free i mean you're you're not doing anything important right now anyway you're just listening to a podcast so i know somebody's gonna ask jeff how difficult are they so the one and two are they're gimme search that's they're actually a great way to pad your resume because they are it is it's one of those where it's like you answer it wrong and it's like well the correct answer is this i want to try again okay yeah they're an introduction to security in general they're talking about yeah email hacks i mean it's nothing it's yeah what's fishing you know yeah what's fishing and what's smishing what's whatever right social engineering there's all that kind of stuff in there but it's it's straightforward they're a great way to pad your resume with some certs like i said i don't it's part of the reason i don't put a ton of store behind search because you can go and just get search and you can pad your resume with certs i used to do the interviews at some guard and there were people that would come in with the ccni or ccie they couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag they would have the cert because they did the brain dump but not the knowledge to do the job and so it kind of put a bad taste in my mouth for certs not that i don't think they're important but they're better for the interview than for proof that you know how to do the job yeah sure so anyway yeah yeah exactly one and it's two easy but the four and then go get some security experience okay so how did you do that how does one get experience then because you're back at the the chicken before the egg scenario like you were earlier right how does one get a security experience without having security experience so this is the benefit of knowing an sc was my friend that was the se he says listen because i got a client um school district of philadelphia they are looking for somebody who is has a strong networking background and they're willing to teach him security sold he goes but it doesn't pay any more than you make right now i said sold he says yeah and uh you don't get the free parking and all that perfect let's do it so um he set me up at the interview and it was ironically straight across the street from where i was working and i literally walked across the street go ahead andy so so this timing is interesting did you reach out to him after that interview and say hey i need something or did he just happen to hit you after that interview and like like did this job just drop out of the sky or were you like this was probably about a three it was probably about three months later yeah because i told him you know he asked me how the interview with uh yeah with my now manager went i told him how it went told him i bombed it i expected to bomb it but i'm glad i made the contact with doug also by the way the nfc one and two i went and got the same day he sent me the links for him i went past the nfc one and two that's how easy they are and then i emailed him back to let him know i passed him because that was the hey by the way i've got those searched you know those two things are checked off the list so that guy was looking looking out for you like he saw that job and thought of you right yeah okay nice so you know i told him i needed to get some experience so he kind of kept his eyes open for some opportunities and so when this job opened up i went over there and sure enough they really wanted somebody with a strong networking background and i was able to get in on those merits alone even though it was a security job and yeah i got in there and the best thing i could say is i had a boss that his principle was you know listen just go out and break stuff jeff we'll figure out how to fix it together but you're not going to learn unless you go break some stuff which is perfect well i know you wouldn't do that in most networks but um but his philosophy was you know go break stuff he wouldn't break anything really bad but his idea was don't be afraid about losing your job if you screw up you're gonna screw up it will figure out how to fix it just go learn how the stuff works so i went there i built a lab from scratch from you know they had some extra hardware so i built a lab that they're still using today i built some tools some automation tools for them i went and did everything i could to make myself really useful in that role and i didn't go there with the idea that this would just be a short-term job i went there expecting that i would go and have to get some security experience but to the boss's credit that i had there uh this guy i'll never be able to thank him enough um he and i were sitting having beers one day at a conference and he asked me what i want for next steps he's like yeah do you want my job do you want this i was like honestly i won't be afforded at se that's the job i want and um interesting okay so he approached me about six months later and he says jeff because i don't want to lose you man because before it has an se position open and now i've only been here for not even a year at the school district and he goes um because i don't want to lose you he says but i think you should apply for it this is my boss telling me this so i go and i apply for the job at this point i've already got my nse4 and i've got my nsc one and two now i've got a year's worth of experience behind my belt and um i submit my resume and i get an interview with the same guy that interviewed me before and it was great because i turned to him i said doug i said you told me i have to go to my nfc one i got that so we have to get my nfc 2 i've got that you told me i have to get my nse 4. i've got that you told me to get some experience and i've got you know a year's worth of experience under my belt working with the some of the largest 40 gates that fortinet has to offer along with all these other products that fortinet has um and then i had six more technical interviews and then landed the job and the rest is history and now i'm working out of affordable campuses they interviewed you six times for this gig uh it was yeah it was about six technical wow they were technical huh so the first interview with him i it wasn't really technical it was you know his probative questions like what's different between a stateful and stateless firewall yeah so all that stuff i was now able to answer with a year under my belt um so i call that a technical interview it was more of a let's make sure you've actually learned some stuff then there were five more technical interviews four or five and then i had an interview with you know some senior manager director guy rick and uh then i had hr interviews and then i had to give a demo and uh giving a demo was its own technical interview because now you've got everybody watching and they tell them this is frightening so they all not only know fortinet they work at fortinet so the one thing that they do and they know and then this is also what they do on a daily basis you don't and you are this is the definition of preaching to the choir right like you're trying to tell them what they already know and it's like that has got to be one of the most frightening situations one could ever put themselves in the this is the this is the apex of what people call imposter syndrome this is like teaching spanning tree to roddy a pearlman right yeah well no this is this is yeah right exactly but no but this is this is like uh you're telling them what their job is but it's also the job you're trying to get and they're like you got to be thinking in your head the whole time like like they're they're looking at every little thing i'm doing like obviously you can't i mean i think the whole point of this is that is that they don't want you to uh to lie right so yeah so it's okay to not know right and it's okay it's okay to skip over stuff if you don't know it that well like somebody will ask you if they want to know but i think what they were trying to figure out is like hey is this guy gonna be us or not if he doesn't know something or if we trip them up with a question you know it's okay to say you know what actually that's a really good question i'll have to get back to you on that because i can't remember right now um it's been a minute since i've gotten into that feature or something you know what i mean so and to be fair i didn't have to i did not have to demo their stuff necessarily okay but you did a technical no i threatened to and then i chickened out and instead i did a demo of how subnetting worked which was a terrible demo so you just said you just had to teach them something i could do anything anything yeah now so why why why do you think they did that why do you think they made you teach because you're not you're not a teacher no but the reason they make you teach is because one of the biggest things that you need to have in this job but one of the biggest strengths you have to have in my opinion is the ability to show somebody how something works be able to be interrupted be able to be distracted be able to be questioned and just roll with it you know you've you have to this is a job where you kind of have to be okay with not really knowing how the conversation's gonna go because there's no such thing as a canned demo when you're dealing with other engineers right you can put together a canned demo but then it's a really crappy demo yeah no one wants to just see you yeah so what they were looking for was they want to see your personality come out they want to see you be able to talk to something they want to be able to ask a question and see did you get rattled by that did did me asking you oh well okay so but why is this not the right answer does that bother you and are you able to recover from it and then exactly as you said they want to ask you a question you don't know the answer to and see are you going to be the guy that's going to come and represent the company and then bs a customer because that's the biggest i think that's the biggest way to get yourself in it in over your head as an essay is to be as a customer or any job really technical interviews same way so if you don't understand if you don't know something tell them you don't know right oh yeah yeah but well my favorite answer right i don't know but i'll find out kind of thing right yeah well if they're calling about something some problem they're having my favorite answer is i don't have a clue man let's go figure it out yeah because there's nothing i like better than not knowing the answer to something i actually enjoy not knowing the answer and have something to be said about that too because you're also there there's an amount of empathy there because you you're like wow that's a really good question because i haven't thought of that nor have i seen that let's figure that out because hey guess what we're now in the same boat because now both of us have to figure this out because if somebody else comes to me with this question i got to be able to speak to it right so so this doesn't happen again i think one of the biggest misconceptions is that if you are like the evangelist or you know sales engineer and and maybe you even go to conferences and speak about fortinet or you know what i mean that like that type of of person that that you know everything and you know every little minutia of the product and and it's just that's just false because it's it's pretty impossible right like and it's also impossible because i i there's something i just have to ask you like there's also there's it's impossible to me to think about that because i feel like there's so much more to being an sc than that and so my question to you would be then what do you think the most important trait to being an se is so like if you had to pinpoint one thing about and this could be anything this could be it doesn't have to be like a personality trait right i think that's usually what pops into heads when you hear the word trait but anything so something on your resume right we clearly know that you're not a huge cert guy so you know leave that one alone this time but you know what i mean so so we we are the art of network engineering right right so what art is this are you building sculptures are you making paintings you know what i mean like what's the best trait for an se and if it's not one thing what are the things that are needed right like give me a list of three or five if that's well it's interesting because the role of an se is not is unlike just about any other well it's actually more like a bunch of roles right so an sc role is your part architect and because someone's going to come to you and they're going to say where does this fit in my environment how's the best way for me to put this in tell me your best practices which is the worst question because best practices for me is not best practices for you it's not best practices for somebody else depends on your setup depends on your industry depends on what you've got going on yeah but you know it's you're you're part architect you're definitely part network engineer because you're going to be interacting we these are network firewalls um you're you're dealing with bgp and ospf and mpls you're dealing with that kind of stuff so you can't have to be a network engineer and you're also part of a sales team so i i think probably the biggest uh the biggest trade i think an essie needs is just being willing to or being able to dive in and roll with the punches and i've i personally have always been somebody that when you know my friend turns me is like how deep is the water like i don't know and i dive in i don't jump any feet first i dive in to find out how deep the water is meanwhile this guy's back with a pole checking the depth of the water right i've never i've always like i like to dive into a problem and get there and essies you need to be reactive you need to be proactive you need to be really versatile but i think i don't know you're in you're an seo you what do you think is the main trait because it it's a it's an interesting question because it's such a versatile role it's you're doing so many different you're wearing so many hats yeah i would i would agree with the adaptability part right you said roll with the punches but i mean that's essentially what it is adaptability but i think i think one of the biggest things you could do for yourself and this isn't just sc specific is just know that you don't know everything and be totally cool with that and and you're not going to even if like let's just say that you work at juniper right and maybe even more specific let's say that you are uh you work for juniper and you're on the mx team all right that's all i deal with is juniper mx and i don't know everything about gender mx that's cool because guess what someone could come to you at some point and be like hey i saw cisco was doing this with this can we do that here you'd be like what cisco what do they do what are they doing sorry i don't know like that you know what i mean you you've you've choked yourself like you locked yourself in the room and shut all the windows you know what i mean and and forced yourself to learn that i do you think because this is uh the other part of it like the adaptability thing do you think that there's a personality type because here's the thing the title i know you said at the beginning the title has the word sales in it right and and you did mention that you had sales experience and yes i'll say that i didn't before i got my sales engineering job my first sales engineering job and you know somebody took a chance on me i had training experience i was a trainer before um because like you said it's it's kind of similar like you were aspiring to be at one point right they're very they're very similar because you're you're telling people how things work right so you got to figure out how to do that know your audience that's one of the biggest things too right um so i think the personality part is huge and i think sales can be taught but i don't think people should be scared off by the term sales because i don't want people to think that i don't i don't want people to think a that you're you know any like earmuffs or a used car salesman but andy was one hell of a used car salesman you know what i mean and and uh his numbers do you think you have to be aggressive so when i told you there's a reason for the job you're jumping into the water head first aaron has a strong personality like it seems to me like a type sales experience like you seem to have to have a strong kind of constitution and maybe i'm misinterpreting it but you know can you be can you be a soft touch as an sc or do you have to kind of remember remember how i describe the job you're the nerd that talks to their nerds i'm not for the most part 99 of my conversations are with other engineers that are at the exact same level and so i don't have this i'm up on a pedestal right or they're or they're up on a pedestal it's you're engineer to engineer so authentic and you're not trying to sell them right you're just showing them the tech right now it sells itself it should right otherwise you shouldn't be working there no that's that's the thing i actually i strongly believe this too sorry not to take off but i'm glad you you you poked on that like how to be forceful because again it does carry on with with the part that i mentioned about the sales part scaring folks off because yeah i there's there's an amount of like yeah you do have to help the sales team but i do firmly believe because i i have yet to have a sales engineering role in my life where i didn't truly believe that it would sell itself right and and so i feel as if you know like if i worked at fortinet i would tell you straight up i would have no problem with that and and the thing about that is that that makes you then 100 authentic and it doesn't come off sleazy it it because you're telling the truth you're speaking your truth and and you're you're educating people and and if you're anything like me and i'm sure jeff's the same way you get on the phone with these guys and and they're like you that andy and dan and both of you talk to ses i'm sure all the time and i would say more often than not they're more they're more like youtube than they are like me and jeff yeah because because you don't have to have an a-type aggressive personality that's what the salesperson's for you know what i mean it what they do to guys like me and jeff when we have sales engineering roles is they task us with doing ancillary stuff that involves having a personality you know so we draw the short straw because we're like oh you guys are loud bro yeah right exactly can you add this booth and talk about stuff all day like that's really what i want to do um but yeah i i think more often than not the most successful folks are the ones that are just authentic regardless of their personality and also regardless even of their knowledge level because like you know we talked about certain and experience and stuff like what experience does one need to have to be an se i think the experience is is kind of just like all over the place like you guys just you got you got to pick and choose but you got to be able to articulate how how you use all of those things to form like voltron god showing my age here but you know voltron wasn't squat until maybe power rangers kids can relate to that right power rangers anybody do they still do that i don't know i don't think they're on like the sixth rendition of it though so okay so there's new power rangers but you get the idea it's like i mean they're all okay by themselves but you know once they come together now now we're talking right so it's like you take one any one of those little things where you're strong at it's like like hey look i'll tell you straight up i'm not the best engineer i'm not the best designer but and i'm not the best like people person but i'm pretty okay at all of those things you know what i mean and you put them all together and boom there's a power ranger so is the secret sauce being technical and you can teach it to people that's definitely part of it so also working for a vendor is probably a little different than aaron working for a provider because for a vendor i have i mean we have 50 products but i have roughly five products that i really have to know right and then we have specialists for everything else so i learned these new products i i deal with these five products all day long i am as close to an expert as you can get on our fortigates and i still don't know all the stuff because there's so much to them yeah but so i need to be able to talk in depth about the products i really know i need to be able to explain the high level products that we have like the web application firewalls i couldn't really tell you you know anything about web application firewalls they're just they're not my baileywick it's not the area i'm strong in but i can explain a little bit about how our web application firewalls work and i can you know tell you some of our key features um but uh or or knack another one yeah i'm not gonna demo knack for you but i can tell you why i think our neck is a good neck and why people seem to like it yeah being able to do that and just have a conversation and as aaron said be authentic that is super key one i never uh poo poo the competition whenever someone asks me what we do different than meraki i'm like i'm like listen i don't work for cisco man i i've heard great things about the merakis i can tell you what we do because that's what i know being authentic being able to have a good conversation with somebody sometimes telling them listen honestly i don't think you need this that's twice the price you could probably get away with this for what you need and just having having a relationship being able to carry on a conversation i honestly and i'm curious how you guys feel on this i feel like network engineers as a whole actually are a little bit different breed of nerd then yeah then like computer programmers or yeah we tend to have personalities we tend to you know be beer drinking hanging out you know cussing swearing guys who don't necessarily live in our mom's space not not saying there's a problem with that it's the cheapest way to live i still like mountain dew just as much as the next guy come on but um yeah i'm saying i feel like network engineers there already is a personality trait there yeah and which means you're going to get along well with other network engineers and that's what the se role is about if you like it well you'll be good at it right like like because again when you like something it's authentic right because we talked about the home lab like a bunch here because we love that um however you set that up maybe virtually or physically um we love the home lab because and i'm always like hey put it on your resume right like but when you start talking about it you're like check out what i got check out what i got like oh oh i got this like i got it right first thing i did when you got on here was like look at my fortigate 60f you know and we started talking about how you know how fast it was and all that stuff but like i i that's hard to find like we weren't trying to sell each other on anything you know what i mean but like it sure i guess from an outsider's perspective like it could have sure sounded like that right like yeah sure just we're just you know pumping each other up like but it there's so much you know that rolls into that authentic piece and it's it of course it helps if you if you enjoy it i would say that about any job honestly you should probably stop doing it if if you don't enjoy it because you really only have one shot here on so i'll kind of inject on that um i i was working with the company once in our a vendor and the wait are you gonna tell us who it was no no no you sure can you can can you give us a rhymes like or sounds like uh whiskey wisco but the the sc told me who uh which model he thought we should have and uh but he didn't he the i guess this was bad on their part because they didn't communicate him in his in the actual sales guy the rep yeah and and he was like i think y'all need this this one and uh the sales guy on a different call we were talking about it and he's like yeah i think you need this one and it was like the the higher one you know and i'm like expensive one i wanted to be like why do you think then please tell me why you think that so that's that was so i what i what i'm what i'm going with is i i totally me being a network engineer on the other side of it i totally appreciate an authentic sc over someone who's just trying to be more salesy right you've hit on the item but when i can't necessarily tell you what you have to have what i can tell you is what doesn't work for an essay and it is somebody who's super salesy because part of being an se is being the guy that's on the engineer's side you know you're on the customer's side you're the guy that's supposed to be the advocate yeah keeping them from getting themselves into a world of hurt and explaining why you think this is the best solution i mean like jeff how awful would you feel if you sold people a bunch of 124 e's and they only have three devices on each one of their their stores yeah right like come on so so that's i think that's part of it too because like i wouldn't you know in any sg role i've ever been in i i wouldn't want to wreck somebody's house i don't want to be responsible for that in fact quite the opposite i want to be the one at the end of the day that's like i recommended they did this and look how awesome it worked and that was my idea right because you know you want to take some pride in that and a little a little bit at least if you do your job well then you're the person they call to ask about other things so if i if i get them into the right you know florida gate or our firewall if we get if i get them into the right piece of equipment and they're happy and we maintain a relationship when they're looking for knack two years down the road they're gonna come back to me first because they liked working with me yeah yeah i'll also i'll second that because uh i've had experiences where uh one of my essies um i i can like call him up when i'm having an issue and and he'll jump on like a you know a zoom with me and uh zoomer or webex you know whatever the case is uh don't want to give away troubleshoot he got he'll jump on and like you know we'll share screen and he'll walk me through something you know just if i have a question i can call him up whenever and and he'll try to help me out as soon as possible and then on the flip side i've got other ses that i you know i have to constantly reach out to but but they're like well hold on let me bring this person in right like they like once they made the sale they no longer want to talk to you anymore they'll they'll push whoever's an expert in whatever you purchased uh yeah you know they'll do that i mean there's some there's some delegates i'd say some companies actually draw a line there and like make the essie only do pre-sale so they're like dude you can't be you can't be handling all that stuff because sometimes they have a lot on their plate anyway um but i think there's a fine line you got to draw as an s82 on that yeah well i don't mean not your knock totally totally right and i didn't mean to make it like that it was more like if i had just a random question kind of thing like he would he would help me out on that um not just every second i ran through different right yeah hey what are you doing you're calling me like 9pm hey yeah yeah do you get pulled into that you'll have like customers that you've talked to before like do they have your number are they calling you with issues because that could be i'm on i've got i've got several customers on teams we just chitchat throughout the day yeah okay i might have might have one types as well yeah not necessarily fortnite related stuff just right basic stuff yeah we all like the same stuff shockingly right like i mean do you have to create boundaries of like hey man i'm you know i'm not the knock like are you able to redirect them if they start to you know yeah so for the most part people respect those boundaries you're gonna find some customers that don't and then you learn some tricks like i'm not i got to be really careful because of customers watching this i don't want them to think i'm talking about them but yeah there are there have been customers in the past where i see their email and i'm like i'm gonna wait a couple hours to respond to that right i have the time right now to respond but they have emailed me on what is clearly a ticket-related question right sure this is something that i need to draw a line yeah so there are some tricks you do like that i never ignore them i never want anyone to feel bad and there are times when i just flat out say hey look man this sounds like a tack related thing they deal with this every day every day yeah it'd be so easy for them to take care of it totally yeah yeah i could try to help you but like trust me they're they're they're well versed jeff i have me personally one very important last question for you my friend okay uh-oh well i think it's i think it's i think it's a touchy thing because we talked about the the title right sales engineer so you're a little bit of both and you've actually said this about previous jobs that you've had what do you say to someone because we have a lot of network engineers what do you say to someone that doesn't have sales experience that wants to be a sales engineer and if someone approach it like if you go through the process and they say sorry you just don't have sales experience how does one overcome that i think mentorship as an se is as important as sales experience so if you want to get into an se role and you don't have sales experience that's hard to go find find out a way to share your information with others be it a podcast or be it a blog or just finding somebody to take under your wing and train that person and then when someone says to you in your interview listen you don't really have some sales experience you like but what i do have is i have a lot of training experience and let me go ahead and tell you about that and that's about redirecting the interview but would you agree that that training and sales are at least in this role are somewhat similar yeah it's it's all storytelling right like that's the whole idea it's like it's any form of that whether it's education or even um like a product manager even right like someone that's really deep in something that all they do all day every day is explain how what they're working on the most works you know so so i guess maybe articulation is is the best way to put that and i would i would append that with one of my favorite terms which is know your audience because you know if you're in an se role and you're talking to all types of different folks right you're talking to dan richards on the phone and you're zooming him right to help him get through his unnamed device right and and help him with his problem but also you could turn around the next hour and be talking to a cio and although that may sound intimidating you have to understand that the cio hasn't been in the weeds in a very very long time and you can't be speeds and feeds fees in those type of folks like you have to you have to put like you have to test the waters and see what everybody know you know you're not trying to talk over anybody's head you're just trying to feed them enough and and let them get more and more and more from you so yeah i answered my own question so what was the answer to the question find a mentor no it's be a mentor be a mentor so if you're trying to get an sc job you interview and they tell you you don't have sales experience you're saying the answer to that is be a mentor i i think it's i think it's do anything you can to show people or to talk to people about technology that maybe aren't as technical as you yeah that you can articulate okay you can articulate complicated things right yeah if you look at my linkedin profile it said this for years i just never changed it but my linkedin profile the only thing i have there which by the way you can get to by going to fordajeff.com um which is stupid because it just goes to linkedin right um but it's like dns but it says i translate geek into english i think the ability to translate geek into english is as important in the se role because of exactly what aaron said sometimes you're not dealing with the engineers most of the time when you're dealing with the engineers you want to be able to translate that geek down to their level if they don't know your product you need to be able to break this down in a different way yeah that's why i say become a mentor you you've helped people in the past you've studied with other groups you learn the best by teaching but also it is very much like sales and then yep i'll end with one final thing because i think we're past our hour here from us from a sales thing i did have when i was working in sales i had a sales manager one time who said to me all things being equal people are going to buy from the person they like yep okay all things not being equal people are going to buy from the person they like so some of this is in the se role is just go make friends most of my customers are i legitimately am friends with a bunch of these people i'm customers with some of them are in the discord channel because i've invited them i'm like you got to check out this podcast that's so rad that's so right that's the same thing they told me at the car place was nobody's ever gonna spend a lot of money nobody's ever gonna you know buy something from someone that's expensive from someone they don't like yeah i know it's a cliche but it's but it's true yeah get them to like it you know customers we bought from fortinet as when i was a customer because we liked our se and we liked our account manager yeah and they bought us lots of beer well yeah yeah and yeah and i can i can attest to that that they definitely do over for a net you guys got deep pockets dude jeff thanks man we appreciate that what a like it's such a mysterious role out there i hope we turn some folks on to maybe the possibility of doing so and and they have i don't know kind of a clear path to get there whether whatever role you're in right now heck if you don't even have an id job period and jeff you're in the you're in the discord server yeah uh with everybody so jeff's there to chat share his wisdom tell you everything he knows about being an sc i'm sure if you haven't been able to tell by listening one of the things that essies are good at is explaining what they do and because that's all they do every day is explain things so if you want to pick his brain i would be more than i'm i'm volunting you right now jeff so i hope you're that's perfectly fine yeah i'm i if you didn't say it i know i i knew you'd be okay with it but but i'm sure jeff would love to give you tips and pointers on how to get in the industry and and how to how to take that path if you wanted more specifics and even if you needed help right like i i think one of the things you kept repeating over and over was it without saying it was that every time you wanted to get something you basically just told a bunch of people what you were gonna do what you wanted to do and then those people were kind of like working in your favor in the background because they everybody knew what you were trying to do and they were like oh i know somebody that's trying to do that and then your name popped up right so don't be afraid to speak it into fruition i guess is the other part of that right so um we one last thing where can we find you obviously we know 40jeff.com is going to redirect to your linkedin page but other than the discord server uh is there any other places twitter that's where i am right now is on the discord server i i tried to get ford jeff on there but another fortinet employee took forward jeff on discord no on twitter oh on twitter i think i have ford clark on there but um and i'm not even posting so i'm not a big poster on social media okay but i'm absolutely someone who responds in fact um i'll throw this out there we talked about mentoring there's a girl that works at the school district of philadelphia right now as a network engineer because this girl reached out to me on linkedin and said hey we both used to work at that mom and pop msp and i want to be a network engineer how do i get into it i helped her study for ccna no way he had a lot of chats uh when it came time to interview we did interview prep and then i at least got her an interview she got herself the job but i was at least able to get her the interview so uh that's true of me i'm sure i know it's true of you guys you guys have offered yeah a lot of times there's nothing better than kind of you know paying it forward and and i couldn't agree more somebody's new so and we great we get to make friends in the process so it's great yeah and and sometimes we start a podcast and get to talk to cool people like you all day so not mad at that just like andy says kind of like the highlight of our week whatever that says about us well well thanks again um we do sincerely appreciate you coming even though we're eventually going to run out of people andy used to work at the comcast knock with but uh while we still have you we've got some names for you now i'm sure you do yeah we we appreciate you uh coming on here i know it's kind of late there but um your words of wisdom have been great please join the discord server if you can it's all about the journey find jeff ping him ask him questions pick his brain he loves to talk clearly so he'll have no problem talking to you and answering questions just like you know i'm i'm the same way of course and everybody here really um just out here trying to share the wealth spread the love man spread love peace love come on everybody peace man uh yeah i hope you this this will make it to video right andy man yeah yeah let's just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just just get it yeah why not why not so everybody can see the florida camper behind you so that's right thanks for listening um if can like subscribe if this is on youtube i'm pointing at something if not you're just hearing me say it and it makes zero sense but hey if you're listening to it for the first time on um uh any one of your favorite podcast screaming streaming uh venues then you know subscribe there too it's not gonna hurt you that way you can keep up to date on all the cool things that we're doing so until next week ladies and gentlemen 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 netenge 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