this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information 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 and tonight with me i have dan howdy how you doing dan i'm doing good aj yourself not too bad yeah that's good i'm really excited dan cause i've known you for for a bit longer than the other guys uh at least i've been talking to you longer than the other guys right like i interacted with andy and aaron on social media but i think that you and i had conversation going uh one-on-one well before i i started talking really to to andy and aaron so i'm really excited to to like hang out with you tonight it's it's just uh you and me uh and uh uh andy and aaron are not around uh so i think we're gonna get into some good conversation yeah i'm really really excited about that so um but we'll get to that in just a second what i do want to get to though are some wins we got a lot of wind so i went back through all the way to like the end of december and i captured all the winds that we've had in the winning channel and the discord and we got some really really good ones um just yesterday kev cam 0 as he goes by his discord john as andy might say passed the jncia junos exam so congratulations kev um is that like the ccna i don't know anything about uh juniper so it's it's really interesting actually that i i would say that the jncia is like a sweet mix between the cc ent and the ccna um it it doesn't really focus on networking foundations it really focuses on um junos right like they're like they're operating their operating system yeah it would be like if cisco had an exam that focused on ios or ios xe or something like that and like really broke it down i mean it it will test you on command syntax and it uses like you know some networking speak to get to it uh through that but um it doesn't you know test you on like osi or anything like that okay i got you yeah it's a little bit different a little bit the same but um yeah it's it's uh it's a really good intro to juniper so if you're considering it i would highly recommend it yeah i think one of these days i i might take a look at some juniper stuff we just don't have any so that's why i don't never looked at it ah well if you look at it you might blossom hey maybe you never know until you try it right right exactly uh i i wish that i could know exactly where this this screen name is headed but i'm just going to say zack zack recently passed his encore so congratulations zach that's a big one uh bow bow tupe uh yeah that's that that's the guy that when uh yeah i'm sure okay i'm sure we'll talk about that with andy here soon but um he passed his n plus exam the comptia n plus nice yeah that's awesome yeah and his plan uh immediately following the n plus uh was to jump into the ccna and well-timed because he he just got uh andy's lab so he'll have that yeah to go with him uh david penaloza we all know david david's really uh really big on the twitter he's also big on our discord and he dropped in the winning channel the other day that he passed the servers provider vpn services exam so that is a okay it's a specialization associated with the service provider track so congratulations david nice good job does he work at a service provider yeah he works for verizon okay okay yep yeah he's an architecture for verizon um a-i-t-j i know jay jay and i have talked many times on twitter and other social media platforms he just passed his azure 104 exam so the az104 nice year anniversary of his first ccie so congratulations jeff again jeff kish in the discord dropping that in the winning channel beautiful plaque cisco centum uh for celebrating 10 years of keeping that certification up to date that is awesome yeah now when you when you do the ccie to keep that up to date do you have to do those continue like what is it continual learning credits or whatever they're called um so there's there's continuing education learning credits uh stuff like that education um so it's taking classes at cisco live you can take encore exams you can do uh or not encore exempts a core level exam so if you already have like your ccie route switch uh you could go for the um security core exam okay and pass that or you could just you know stay on the same track and and pass the encore and that would renew it um and then i recently just read that you could do three of the professional level specializations okay and that would renew your your expert level certification as well gotcha yeah so there's a couple different ways that you can do it now okay well good job though and then uh there's also i mean if you if you don't want to do that uh there's the what is the emmer emeratus or emeritus yeah i forget how you say it you know so yeah but it's kind of like you retire it right like so it's it's you you hold it like if if you're in a point where you can't commit to like studying or you know going through that recertifying process instead of like letting it expire and then having to start from square one uh you can pay cisco a nominal fee and it's like less than 100 bucks as as i understand it and it moves your ccie to the emeritus status and then whenever you get around to it you go ahead and you know take that core level exam those three specializations or whatever you decide you want to do and as soon as you do that that pulls it out of the ameritos status and renews it to fully certified gotcha so it's just a way to like keep it going without letting it expire yeah can i take my cc ent and put it in i don't know that that might be a question we'll have to tweet it learning at cisco and see if that's a possibility i'm not sure i'm just curious that's really funny like ccent ameritos i'm going to put that on my linkedin that is great oh this is not time right now i got that i can't do something that's right that's right um so like like i alluded to earlier in the intro i think that you and i we both come from smaller areas right like vermont not a big place uh the particular area in tennessee that you live in not a particularly uh populated area and and what does that mean right we're we're fighting for jobs yeah yeah the the job market is not what it would be in say a metropolitan area exactly and yeah where where i live the the town i'm in i mean i can't even think of 10 jobs or 10 you know companies in our area that would even have like an i.t department so a handful of places i have to work at one but uh yeah i it very very small town very um what's the word i guess remote i guess you want to say if you yeah and and the thing is is like nashville is a booming i.t uh place right now that's true and but to work in nashville which now you know with a lot of jobs going remote it puts you back on the market a little bit more yes but but before covet happened and all that stuff and uh before working remote really got big you'd have to drive all the way to nashville and if anybody that lives in the nashville area knows 65 north and south is like absolutely horrible on traffic and i mean we've been there i've driven down that road yeah so it's just in the morning times and uh it will basically the time people going to work and when they're leaving work it is just a freaking nightmare yeah it's like wrecks every day and it's just bad uh so driving through all that that's just a i got a funny story about driving on that highway i got hit by a wheelbarrow i'm not even joking you gotta watch out for them wheelbarrows around hit by a wheelbarrow yeah there's a car like two or three lanes over it's rush hour traffic i'm in a rental van and i've got my team with me like three people that i work with that work for me i was the i.t manager at the time were going from the conference venue that we were in town for back to our uh airbnb which was just outside of downtown nashville like lower lower broadway right just a couple blocks over from there um and there's a guy he clearly does some sort of outdoor business he's got his truck towing a trailer got a wheelbarrow on there that trailer hits a pothole that wheelbarrow comes flying off the trailer and directly skidding across like three lanes of traffic uh there's cars in front of me there's cars behind me there's nothing i can do so i'm i'm like looking out the driver's side window watching this this whole barrel come at me and i'm just like uh hang on yeah and that thing like hits the minivan it puts a very good gouge in like the front rocker panel like fender area just behind the driver's side front tire and it bounces off the van and starts skidding back the other way across traffic and people are like hitting their brakes or swerving yeah fun times in national highways yeah well if anybody that lives in the area knows that the traffic is absolutely horrible in the nashville area so yeah that you know i just because here's the thing like let's say let's say if i had to drive that every day right and it's like an hour plus to get there in an hour plus to get back home i mean you just added two hours to your day right there yeah yeah that you're not at your house with your family or doing what you want to be doing kind of thing and anybody else test like that that kind of stuff uh you know because i've done that i had to take a job outside of the county that i live in and it was like an hour hour and a half one way and you know i would say at first doing a commute like that like it gives you some time to think about your day uh you know what what am i going to accomplish when i get to the office uh and then you could listen to a podcast while you're uh while you're creating it um and then you know at the reverse at the end of your day you know you could think about stuff like oh what didn't i get done today what could have gone better you know working on that project or whatever there was definitely some benefit to the commute but i would say by and large it added more stress it took time away from the family and it just at a certain point uh when the job wasn't maybe as exciting and when it became more stressful than the commute just added to that you know whole negative feeling of i can't believe now you know not only do i not want to go to work today now i got to drive an hour an hour and a half one way to get there yeah and i mean you got to dodge wheelbarrows getting there just it's just stress that i don't want yeah yeah uh because like where i'm at now i i mean i'm i'm only like 15 minutes away from work and it's a it's a straight drive basically i mean there's no crazy traffic or anything like that and i just get in my car and drive on down beautiful so so to kind of i guess highlight to to give the audience some uh concrete facts that lets them know just how small a town we live in yeah uh i wanted to highlight that so um for me in the entire state of vermont 624 000 people okay um golly that's the entire state the entire state of vermont wow that's that's not like burlington which is you know by far the largest city and the most populated that's just you know 624 000 is the entire state of vermont so so some some areas that compare to that seattle seattle washington 724 000 people live in seattle uh washington dc 692 000 uh and boston not too far from me 684 000 and also not too far from me montreal 1.7 million so you take like somewhere like boston in that just that city just boston yeah like could live in vermont just spread them out yeah exactly that's why indeed that's why uh in fact more people live in boston than live in the state of vermont so you could take like you know three quarters of boston and that's vermont yeah wow um looking at at some larger areas you you live just just outside nashville tennessee nashville tennessee is 1.2 million tennessee as a whole is 6.8 million people uh la 3.9 million new york city 8.4 million and london 8.9 million and then the small county that i live in just this just the county that i live in is 164 000 and the county that you live in is 96 000. so when you think about you know the county that you live in the county that i live in versus a place like new york city okay millions and millions of people like there's gonna be a lot of jobs in in a place like new york city yup not a lot of jobs there's not a lot of jobs period and then you want to look at like i.t jobs okay there might be a good handful of i.t jobs but um i see a lot of like sql and applications this and and stuff other stuff right like the the amount of jobs that are like infrastructure related or if you're if you're looking in in my area if you think that you're going to move to burlington vermont and find a network engineering job you you may but it's probably far and few between because there's very few places up here that are so big that they require a net a dedicated network engineer most of the it places around here you're a jack of all trades master of nothing right like and and that was most of my it career was doing just that i'm i've held titles like network engineer and network administrator but i can tell you that networking was just a small part of the job yeah yeah and the our our company is a little different in our area like i think our it department's about 160 170 or something like that wow now the infrastructure team we're only about like 15 or something like that 14 something um and then the network team specifically there's only four of us and so i don't think even the hospital has close to that big of a of an i.t department here now i don't know if they outsource a lot of their a lot of their staff or or what but or their work maybe um but yeah i think i think we have the largest i.t in our in our county if i was to guess yeah yeah yeah the hospital in our areas is the largest employer in in the entire state of vermont i think there's thousands of people that work there um yeah there's been some other larger companies surprisingly a lot of like um e companies right like um we have uh a company here that that focused on providing a web front end for grocery stores so if you wanted to have an account with the grocery store where you track all your coupons and stuff like that like that's that's what this company did um there's another company in a different county that they provide software for recreational areas so golf clubs and resorts and you know other places like that like you know tractor memberships schedule times and tea boxes whatever the case may be and and that's headquartered out of here in vermont uh so it is really interesting the different kinds of companies that you'll find around here but i think that with a lot of the technologies like sas based stuff like the need for having in-house i.t people to do some of that is just not it's not always there not to mention this the size like vermont is really really big on small business and as a result you know there's a few businesses around here that they've been around for decades but are the only now are they growing to the size where they are starting to think about having a dedicated i.t person so point in case i've got a good friend of mine he works at a company they're a skin care company and he's their first dedicated it employee and they've been around for decades okay but they just grew to the size now to where they could actually haven't there they could justify having an i.t person yeah yeah and to meet the company's it needs there have been you know a a couple of you know tech savvy people that worked there that kind of took on the okay you know i t function right like so you know they they help buy computers and you know buy software and get it set up for other employees but they weren't and they definitely weren't an i.t person per se uh and and so after having so many people and all these computers they finally said okay well maybe we should get an i.t person in here to you know help drive us forward technology wise yeah and he he just applied to another job and it's the same situation company a little brewery that's been around forever and they finally have grown to the size where they need a dedicated i.t person on staff that there are a couple of uh it msps shops in the area that you know that they serve the local area they'll serve you know maybe new england or vermont new hampshire maine that kind of thing but that they definitely cater to a lot of the small businesses in the area so you know if you really wanted to get into an infrastructure network engineering position that's where you may kind of like find yourself because those are the businesses that have knocks which okay uh i i love i love andy uh you know usually he i've heard him say it like well doesn't it doesn't your company have a knock i've i've never worked for a company that's not a knock yeah me neither um you know the company that i work for now we have a knock but you know we we're a managed service provider as well and so we have a knock to serve our customers i i've worked for a company that was a global organization had locations on several different continents and we didn't have a knock okay yeah um so you had me at a brewery that has an i.t guy i i need to i didn't know that was a thing like oh yeah yeah what am i doing like i need to i need to apply for something like that vermont uh is known for having more breweries per capita than anywhere else in the country okay yeah you always have those like funky ipa cans that you show yes yes that's true there's tons and tons and tons of microbreweries around here uh no shortage of them there's new ones popping up all the time it's incredible uh and again the state caters to small business so you know people brew beer they home brew they decide one day you know what i'm gonna give this thing a shot and they go for it and uh you know it's funny like once once a brewery gets into a space it's built for a brewery right like it's got all the all the equipment in there that they need and if if the business doesn't do well well it turns around and gets sold to another up-and-coming brewery there you go and so there's there's all of these places that you know for better or worse they've had maybe two or three different breweries in the building but there's always good beer to have so that's what it's all about exactly exactly and and so that there's there's a lot of these these really great stories like there was a guy who started brewing beer uh in like the early 2000s and he was literally brewing and filling kegs in his basement and then he would take the kegs and go sell them to bars in downtown burlington and now he has a massive plant he's got hundreds of employees and it's this massive massive operation they've just started canning 12 12-ounce cans that they're going to start selling like 12 packs right of this beer like it was literally like it's when it started you could only find it on tap period you can only find it at certain places you know and then that started to grow you could find it on tap at more and more places and then they started at their 10-year anniversary they started a release of bottling and now they're just getting into canning and it's been over 20 years now and they're and they're growing to the size of they need a dedicated i.t person okay that that is awesome so dude literally started in his basement and then taken it to some places and they were selling it and then he's now got his own like full operation yep that's awesome yep all right so here's a random thought we need to start an msp for breweries that specialize in breweries wait maybe we need to cut that out of the box we don't want people selling their ideas yeah right right yeah i think you find like a lot of like feel good stories like that though right like the small mom and pop businesses that grow uh i've worked for a construction company that was it was family named family owned for the longest time and um just before i started working there um they turned it into an esop so employee owned okay um operations so that there's lots of businesses like that are out here as i'm sure there are you know where where you live you know i don't know i mean i've never lived in a metropolitan area maybe there's tons of stuff like that uh in a metropolitan area but um it i think it's it's definitely different living in a small town area like this or or a lesser populated area uh when you start to think about like the job market yes uh and and positions and stuff like that like well because you got to think like you know you have your job market it's a whole pie right but then you got your different sectors that that there are and when you start saying when you keep nailing it down to okay i t so that takes a big sliver out of the pie there and then not only i.t but infrastructure okay that's another slice of the pie and then specifically networking and you know so as you keep going down what i'm trying to say is like obviously in these metropolitan areas where there's millions and millions of people and they've got these you know major corporations and whatnot uh i would assume that it is much easier you know your pond's a lot bigger so right yeah your choices you've got you got more choices than in a very small town like this yeah i would think like you could get into a vertical and stay in that vertical right like if you wanted to work in i.t for manufacturing in a larger area or in the rust belt right like it would probably be no problem to get into manufacturing and stay in manufacturing i've worked in manufacturing i've worked in school districts i've worked for public businesses private businesses i've kind of done the entire gambit except healthcare i haven't worked in healthcare i heard you have to sell your soul for that one that might be true i'm not sure um so yeah i i mean it's it's a lot more it i feel like it's a lot more competitive and and one of the things that i think that made it competitive up here is the college that i went to because it was an i.t focused college and i think there's a lot of colleges that might have like a computer science degree but the college that i attended uh actually had like infrastructure like they had like a network administrator systems administrator classes they taught classes on windows and linux and stuff like that it wasn't just programming and hardware and like the computer sciency stuff like it we we actually did a lot of that and so you would have graduates of this college you know by and large most of them would take off and leave the state as do most people that graduate uh as soon as people leave high school they they kind of get out of here and go find uh larger prospects and and jobs they're interested in but um you know people that that are interested in those it jobs tend to like find them and and soak them up pretty quickly so one of the things that i think can really help people that live in a similar area is networking and now i'm not talking about like uh i.t networking i'm talking about the social networking yeah because that's one of the things that helped me get almost every single one of my jobs it wasn't me going out and applying for jobs i would get asked to apply or somebody would tell me about a position that they wanted me to go apply to in order for me to get you know to move from one place to the other yeah and i mean since you've already worked at every company in vermont our i.t job i guess if aaron was here he would right i think i think you would laugh i don't know uh yeah so that brings us to another point you know you you and i although we're similar in a lot of things we're also not similar in the fact that you've worked how many jobs now oh don't make me go back and count we'll just say 20 plus somewhere around there right yeah see it's not it's not that bad you know okay all right 18. something like that you know what again i'm gonna i'm gonna go do this in real time i'm gonna go and i'm gonna look at my linkedin profile and see how many it jobs have i had so there's one two three four five six uh seven eight seven eight eight eight eight different jobs final final number eight final number yeah let me let me go to my linkedin one yeah one one one it job that i've worked so so we're different in that right uh you've you've done eight it jobs and i've been at the same one going on my ninth year actually wow that in june this year will be my ninth year um yeah so we've talked we've we've talked around this before in some of our other uh episodes um you know what are the pros and cons of working multiple jobs versus working one job is it bad is either one bad because i've know people who kind of look at me as like um i'm not growing right because they're they're going from environment to environment to environment and i think there's some truth in that right i think there's there's a benefit of seeing multiple environments out in the wild right because you you get a better idea of like maybe this person wasn't doing it right but that if if that's the only way they know that's the only way they know right and as as you see different ones you might see you might take a little bit from each one each experience and become a more knowledgeable person over that like what to do in a certain situation kind of thing um but then on the flip side some people might think you know you're not invested into a company because you're job hopping right and so i think there is something to be said for for both of that right like um everybody does i.t a little bit differently and um yeah i would say that in in your instance just in the time that i've known you and and talk to you like i don't think that you should be concerned about growth or experience right because i feel like you've gotten a few promotions since i've met you um i know that you've implemented some fun technology you know you got hands on cisco aci you got some new palo alto firewalls you're doing a lot with nexus like you kind of got a lot going on there so you're getting some really good experience just staying at this one place and and so um i i would say that i have at times experienced the inverse where even though i have moved on from one place to another the infrastructure at one place wasn't really well developed they were running like literally dan on the one of my first days there i'm going through and walking walking through the building checking out the network looking at their different closets and i found a 10 meg hub oh nice in use oh wow and that was that was in the last 10 years nice um and and so it took a long time to convince them that you know because as far as they were concerned oh it's working network's working i don't we don't need to replace this there's no problem here right and it's just like well no like that's that's not good equipment it's not modern equipment you could be operating faster more secure you know and so there has been that struggle at times where even though i've moved on to a newer different place it was such a step back in time that you know it actually took some time to get it modernized let alone uh start looking ahead at like where are we going to take the company what what kind of technology initiatives do we have to keep on our radar in order to support the business as it moves forward kind of thing so um i i think that there's there's a little bit of both uh now as far as like does it hurt you um it can i think um if you're moving around like every six months every year uh something like that that i i think that that kind of movement can hurt you um i don't feel as though the movements that i've made have ever hurt me um at least i have never gotten that feedback throughout my career and you know as i as i look through it there are some short stints yeah so uh i the the um like second it job i had or no that was it was kind of like technically my first my i i did like a um internship for the car dealership that i worked at and um after the internship i continued to work there not formally in it but i was basically one of the it guys like anytime there was a computer problem i was like the sudo help desk okay it wasn't my job to be the help desk but um i would say that at least half my time was spent helping the it guy take care of it requests okay and then if he was occupied with something and there was a problem at another dealership then i got pulled off of my primary job and sent down to the other dealership to help out with the i.t stuff so i was definitely doing more i.t work as part of my daily job than what my actual daily job should have been so i worked for a company for a while i got laid off that was like a little over a year absolutely nothing i can do about that bad economic times i had to move on i worked for four months for a small very small consulting company it was a great job it was my first job as an engineer as a network engineer and i really got deep on some cisco vipe experience and unfortunately it was just one of those things where like i was on the road every day i was headed into my senior year of college and i couldn't see myself maintaining that kind of daily grind and trying to wrap up my senior year of college and so i made the decision i'm like i'm sorry like i gotta finish college i made that the priority and and so i did find a job that was closer to home um now to your point about growth my my next job after that i worked for tech support for school district um it was a great job i liked working there and there when i when i got hired there was a lot of promise of oh well you could grow into this position and this could happen and this could happen and this could happen and after working there for 11 months there was no sign of growth i was completely stunted as to what i could do i was hired on to help start the help desk there was a team of you know network and systems administrators that lobbied to have a help desk started because they were trying to focus on project work to help move systems forward but they couldn't because they kept getting pulled off and you know having to do the help testing so that's why they wanted to hire me start to help desk and so is interesting as their claim was i was so chained as far as what i was allowed to do that i didn't feel like i was growing i was like i could only unlock student accounts i was not allowed to unlock any adult accounts and the entire school district no teachers no support staff like if if the help desk rang and it was an adult voice and the other end i'm like i'm sorry i'm gonna have to escalate the call i know how to help you but i can't help you yeah and no matter how much i went to and tried to lobby for my own behalf of like look i i know how to help these i i can take care of this this could be one less phone call that you guys don't have to worry about like isn't that why i'm here uh kind of thing and it just it never changed i guess and so in some cases it felt like it got worse and so because of that like i like to feel like i'm being challenged i feel like to feel like i'm you know there's opportunity to grow and as soon as i hit a point where i no longer feel like i have that that's when i get bored that's when i start looking yeah uh and so after only 11 months i moved on from that position okay so between that position in your other position you've got a little over a year between those two jobs yep and were those your were those your short your short term jobs that you had those were the not the two shortest stints i did it i did another stint for the same company for seven months um and again it was just me and the owner and uh there was there was a couple times where some paychecks weren't getting made uh and you know it was gotta get paid man i know i see it and that this was a time where like i have a family yeah i am i'm married now yeah right uh and and not having income coming into the household is not a great thing and um you know i tried to be reasonable uh and it's just like hey i i do work i gotta get paid this is how this this works and uh when there was too much difficulty like i i would get paid eventually but it was like not on payday all the time sometimes and and so it just felt like for somebody who now has a family and wants to buy a house it's time to have a stable source of income yeah so it was that kind of thing that prompted me like even after only seven months it was you know unfortunately time to move on kind of thing yeah but that yeah that one that one makes complete sense i mean you gotta get paid for what you're doing yeah i think that's the other thing you know too like in nowhere is there a large gap in my employment right like i it's not like i lost my job got laid out for fired and then couldn't get hired for months at a time it was like typically i left one job on a friday and started the next job on a monday once in a while i would take a vacation in between the two jobs uh but i've only done that a handful of times gotcha yeah i think there's something to be said about that too and that's your your job security right yeah because i mean obviously you're making the smarter choice and to get away from that because you need that you need that security for your family right you know exactly uh and so that's and i think that's where i can have like maybe a point on my on my side if we wanted to if we're doing sides here you know it's like i feel very secure in my job right like yeah i've i've worked my way through it and uh i don't we've never had a downsize in the past so they've never just laid off a bunch of people to you know downsize or anything like that um i say that let me knock on wood real quick but i i feel very secure in my job i i don't feel like i have to go home worrying that uh my job's on the line or something like that yeah yeah so i i feel like and like like i say that you know totally another point in your favor is is there's lots of growth there like you're doing a lot of stuff you know you've got yeah all the meraki stuff you've done the paulo stuff you've done the nexus stuff the aci like you're doing a lot you're getting a lot of good experience i think the trap that sometimes people can fall into is they're just going to work and you know there's there's no growth you're not learning any new skills you become really comfortable with the network you become really comfortable with the the little bit that you have to do right and you don't have to worry about anything else outside of that you're not really being challenged and and you know what i i would say that for some people that's exactly okay because they just want to go to work yeah earn a paycheck and go home and uh they don't they don't live to work right right they they work to live that's right but i i feel like i'm i'm sort of that way like there's definitely growth is good right if i got to where i wasn't growing i i i feel like i would probably start looking somewhere else yeah uh it just happens to be every time i start getting into that mode where i'm like all right i'm i'm i'm feeling stuck now they they decide they want to bring something new on and it's like you know it's like i get a mushroom you know out of mario and it's like all right hold on let me uh we got this so uh yeah just yeah and then and then like what you're saying in this past year i mean we are past i guess technically in 2019 uh er yeah 2019 2020 we bought a bunch of stuff and it's gonna take me a bit to learn it all and so i've i've got something to chew on for the next for the next good bit uh so we'll see we'll see what comes up you know in the future but yeah i uh we definitely have grown out when i first started here it was a complete flat network right completely flat network we had like a slash 20 or 21 and everything was just on it and so it we went from that to now we have a you know a three-tier core uh architecture or architect um it's just it's crazy how much we've grown how much equipment that we've you know grown into like it's just with the times it you know the the demand right we've grown in in our in our clients and stuff like that so yeah you know just growth that that's awesome uh you know i think another key to wanting to stay where you're at excuse me cut that out um it is is your boss who you work for the culture yeah in in where i'm at uh the team that i work with like yeah there's there's i would say there's around four of us or so that we're pretty pretty darn close like we can knock out pretty much anything that comes up you know at our job and we we trust each other we know each other's families you know stuff like that like and so these these people have become my friends essentially and and so that's that's super nice right uh yep i they've we've all been there they some of them have been there longer than i have so yeah yeah there's there's something to be said about that too like the the team spirit the um the culture is big um i i definitely had that with a group of people that i worked with we were like a family and whenever we had big projects that required us to like you know work late at night or something like that everybody pitched in right regardless of whether or not it was in our wheelhouse like if there was an application upgrade like i typically didn't do the erp side of the house but if there was something going on i was in there and it's like give me something to do how what can i do to help us get through this and make sure we can all get out of here at a reasonable time and the same thing happened when there was network upgrades you know like there was application people you know moving switches around the building racking and stacking helping us get stuff in um it was it was always a team effort which was great and the other the other side of that i think is is definitely your manager um i've worked for a manager that was older and all he cared about was his path to retirement and he wasn't very interested or vested in my path for growth and we brought in a consultant to do the virtual cio thing and working for the vcio was amazing because he was interested in my growth and he was interested in my career path and when we started to look at new technologies i was picked to go to training and do all this stuff and that went on for a good couple of years and it got to a point where the the company that i worked for was going to terminate the relationship with the vcio that you know we had gone through a lot of growth it's it felt like we could sustain our on our own and and so the vcio was not showing up as much anymore as he used to and i could already tell that with my with my actual boss like things were starting to settle back into how they used to be the the old ladies yeah yeah and so i could tell like the writing is on the wall right like as soon as the vcio is like fully out of here uh i'm i'm gonna go back to being stuck where i was before the vcio showed up and and so i i decided to take an opportunity and leave yeah and that was also the job that was like an hour and a half drive away from where i lived so that you had two things going against you on that one huh yeah yeah well okay so um you brought this up earlier but how do you think kovid has affected the job market and for for guys like you and i that live in small town areas well uh i guess maybe if anything that's been one positive about covid is you know forcing companies to go remote i think companies are starting to see that remotes not that bad that i think because our company is a very um what do you want to say it's old school right it's an old school culture and everything like that and they did not like the idea of going remote but i think they've been opened up to it now that you know they they would have never been like okay y'all can work remote you know for you know however many months we've been working remote now um and i think they kind of saw the benefit of it right that uh you know we we could do this and not be not be um i mean we're adults right like that's honestly what it comes down to we're adults we you know i'm if they hire me to do a job i'm gonna do it whether it's at my house or if i have to go and sit in in the cubicle farm um so i i think that has put people like us you know on the list for your your job that was an hour and a half well let's say you could work remote how nice would that have been yeah and i have to drive an hour and a half there was there were several locations so like the main office was like an hour and a half away but we had a manufacturing facility that was like literally out my back door like oh wow yeah it was like uh just over the next town border right and it was like a five minute drive from my house and towards the end of me working there i i was able to negotiate like let me work there like two days a week if you won't let me work from home yeah let me work there like two days a week uh and just give me a little bit of a break here and and they did and uh but it was it was under like well as long as you have stuff to do there don't just go there and take up a cube like if you can figure out work that needs to get done up there uh then okay you know fine we'll let you do that kind of thing gotcha so so yeah so you know work what we were talking about at the at the beginning you know with with nashville right up the road um i i feel like i could start applying for more like nashville jobs working remote and not have to you know go in uh battle wheelbarrows on i-65 now i don't have to worry about that right right uh but i i mean like what do you think what what what's your opinion on kobe right i think it's i think it's level people in our areas i think it's level the playing field right like i don't know if that if it gives anybody a competitive advantage but i think it's leveled the playing field because even though local places around here that are maybe a little bit further than i would have considered driving are hiring and allowing remote employees now that means anybody anywhere could apply for the job but i don't know if you know people that live in other states are looking to you know fill a job in vermont but maybe if it's a remote position maybe they are it was interesting for a short time pre covered vermont was offering a 10 000 tax credit to anybody that moved to vermont either to take a job here or live here but work remotely and then they would give you a 5 000 tax credit for the first two years that you lived here just from moving to the state during that time period and continuing to work either for somebody locally or you continue to work remotely yeah i mean i guess when your entire state only has what 600 some odd thousand yeah like yeah i i guess i could see it okay because i mean honestly like it was it was starting to take a noticeable impact because what we would see in the local population was that by and large a lot of people that grew up here took off and would go have a life somewhere else and they they might come back after they had kids they might not um they would come back towards the end of their life uh and so the a lot of the schools were feeling the impact of that and that there's there wasn't a whole lot of new school age children coming in year after year in fact the school district that i worked at had to close in elementary school because there just was not that many new kids like they could not sustain a third elementary school like they had so they had to close it to go uh to go down to two wow okay um and so this was an attempt by the state to to bring more people back into the state or or try to keep them here i got you i don't know how well how well that worked yeah um but i mean i i think that's another thing that you know we probably have going for us both is it's a beautiful place to live right oh yeah um the there's so much going on here in vermont like you know hiking trails mountains uh skiing i'm not really into skiing personally but you know there's tons of skiing and stuff like that it's it's just a great place to be and everything's a short drive away uh if you really want to have some fun and get into some trouble then you know you take a long drive going back to the brewery thing yeah they have they have a really cool program up here called the passport it's a beer passport and it's a little card i think they have an app for it too now um but you travel around to every single brewery and you get your passport stamped and it and it's really neat and if you you stamp out you fill up your passport and you can trade in your passport uh every year there's like a brew fest down at the burlington waterfront you can trade in your completed passport for some cool swag okay well that's neat have you have you done that oh yeah uh it was actually uh when when my wife and i were dating that's that's kind of like what we did we love traveling around all these different breweries checking them out i saw more of the state of vermont while uh her and i were doing that than i had ever seen in my entire life like literally corners of the state i had never been to uh and it was it was beautiful it was a fun time yeah but see how how cool is that that you know you you did that right that you you were able to go to all the different corners of vermont and uh where otherwise you might not have you know exactly exactly that's that's cool i'm gonna have to come up to vermont sometime it's a long drive and i'm staying away from airplanes right now so uh but it i don't blame you yeah it's a long drive but i think it's worth it because like you'll have to take me to some like camping spots or something like that and oh yeah yeah there's there's councils there's no trails and what not yeah there's there's uh state parks all over the place there's actually several state parks not far from my house and yeah uh campgrounds a little bit further so there plenty plenty to do plenty of options i can get some uh patches while i'm there you know oh yeah yeah absolutely dude that'd be awesome um so yeah go going back to the working remote i think it's level the playing field i i've always worked for remote uh i well not always but i have been working remote at least a year before covet started i started my current job in january 2019 and i've been work from home since then uh and i love it i i never want to go back to showing up somewhere to report to every single day like there's just so much flexibility in this so i hope that um as as unfortunate as covid is that it has brought about a hopefully permanent change that hey this job you know we thought it needed to be done here it turns out doesn't necessarily have to and that in the future you'll see more remote opportunities like permanently remote opportunities i know some people that i used to work with at another company they are able to uh finally like they have such specialized skills in it right like i know a woman that uh she works with salesforce she does uh a lot with salesforce.com uh as like a an application for a business and there aren't a ton of businesses locally that use salesforce at least you know as she has been casually looking for a while uh for salesforce related posting she hasn't found a ton okay um and through networking in the community like they have like a salesforce users group like she is aware of several businesses that use it but there you know there's not a lot of turnover so you know she can't just wait it out and apply so because of kovid she has found a large-sized business uh in the northeast here that she's been able to apply uh for another salesforce position okay i i'm not necessarily sure that that opportunity would have been there had it not been for coving right right right and forcing people to go remote and all that right right now here's an interesting idea um what how are they gonna how because this might be a curveball for employers how do you handle pay for someone who might be in a different area then you know like if i if i was to let's say if i applied for a job in california or in seattle or something like that i think i think their average income is a lot higher than my area oh yeah and so how would that work like would i get paid their scale because i mean then would not everybody be applying for those that are in the lower a lower average uh income right and you know what that's that's i guess a negative for for small town folks right the cost of living isn't as high yeah here as it is say in like new york city or or seattle or la or something like that right like right yeah you're not gonna make comparatively uh you're not gonna make the same money by any means right um so yeah i that that i am very interested to see how that would happen so like if you apply and get like a remote position with a company that's based out of a large area are they going to pay that salary are they going to scale it down to where you live yeah because that because that could be taken a couple different way a ways right like let's say me and you both applied for a job in california and we both got a job there but well i don't know what y'all's average income is but let's say your average income is higher than my average income but if we're doing the same job are we getting paid you know the same california or are you getting paid more because you're in vermont and you know what i'm saying like right right or hell or hell let's compare it like if i was doing the same job that someone that lived in in california right am i gonna get paid different than the person that's living there you know i that's something that's always uh bothered me because as as i have networked and talked with other people you know we don't have we don't sit there and have conversations about our income right but like it's it becomes obvious that uh they get paid more they that the same position in a different area can make more money yeah uh and it and it's unfortunate and then and then you start to look at like well no wonder people move out of vermont because they can go somewhere do the same thing and get paid a whole lot more uh and even when you take into account the cost of living they're still putting in their bank account they're still pocketing more money even after taking care of all their their living expenses uh and that to me you know doesn't seem quite fair does it yeah i i'm totally with you on that maybe that's just a small town guy in australia yeah it definitely is um because i if aaron was in here you'd be like we'll come move to the big city you know but yeah it's a lot lot easier said than done right there's a lot of a lot of times where i probably could have taken the opportunity to to relocate but um right and and i think that's really tough to consider yeah and i think that's just you know a difference in a person right like sure i could go move wherever and you know get a job in you know whatever location but my family's here right yeah you know most of my family's here so it's like i i don't know i just different people have different priorities right and and so for me you know i want to stick closer to my family um some people they don't mind moving across the the united states i've got a really good buddy of mine he he was born and raised here and he's now in upper michigan but okay that's just that's the way he wanted to do it you know and and nothing wrong with that it's whatever people want to do yep so yeah i i think you can't we can't label people or not label people but we can't say like oh you just got to move wherever the jobs are or right you know that's a lot easier said than done yeah it just just depends on your priorities and your interest yeah for sure i i i know you know for me personally the families here my really good friends are here and uh it would be just be really tough to want to like take my family uproot them and go somewhere else i mean the schools here are really good uh it's there's a lot to be said about you know my comfort level living here yeah yeah exactly although i i have promised my wife that at some point we will move to her home state which is not she still lives in she's still uh she's from massachusetts right so um it's not like it would be a huge lift to go from vermont to more like a cover right right um yeah but she but she grew up in a nice little like uh seaside town in in massachusetts and um you know we go there and we visit like every year and it's it's beautiful so i would have no problem uh moving down there but yeah we'll do that at some point at some point okay yeah okay well that's good i i don't have any plans of moving out of tennessee at the moment so yeah i don't i don't foresee it i'm not gonna say not that i won't but uh currently i don't see any reason so do you think that if you did would your current employer entertain the idea of letting you work remotely i think so um because the only reason why i say that is because someone who worked there for a long time he moved to florida with his daughter and they allowed that they they allowed him to work remote and live in florida so um i don't think if it was like several years ago they might probably they probably wouldn't have done that just because like how new i was there to the company yeah yeah but now that i'm starting to rack up on some years i i think they i i feel confident they would probably let me i i can't say that for sure but um i think they would yeah and if i could go somewhere i don't know where i would go to be honest with you i do have some family in florida but i'm not really big into florida yeah um and then i also have some family over in texas so i i don't know i really don't know where i would move if i had if i could move anywhere probably not far from where you are now yeah if i had some family out west i would definitely like look into like the colorado area or oh yeah there you go somewhere where there's like you know trees and trails and still feels like home yeah the outdoors yeah you're not moving to san jose no no no no no no silicon city for for no definitely not too many people yep yep and there don't want to do that yeah awesome dan uh this has been a lot of fun i think we should do this more often yeah we should just have these like chill conversations you know where uh aaron doesn't talk the entire time and we can and we can get a word in yeah we can word and edgewise people didn't even know what my voice sounded like really because no that's great i'm joking no no it's all good all good uh no that this has been great i think it's an interesting perspective on uh the market i and you know what i would love to have this conversation again with with andy and or aaron uh and understand their point of view you know yes andy i think has always been uh close to philadelphia uh area and that's obviously a huge area i know that aaron uh is not originally from california um as long as i've known him he has been in big cities um but i am aware that he is is not from a big city originally uh he's bounced around a few places though right yeah yeah was he from florida i don't think so oh okay maybe is it just his parents here in florida yeah his parents are currently in florida yeah okay um so yeah i think there's a lot of great perspectives to offer and uh i'm sure we'll have those conversations soon but this this was a good one any uh parting bits before we go no not that i can think of well i would say regardless of where you are uh if you want to help yourself out in the job market spend some time on your linkedin profile and spend some time networking get in with local communities there's there's tons of great uh community focused uh it focused as well uh organizations right so i used to do a lot of sharepoint administration i know there's like a sharepoint users group um there is a vmware users group vmug i am a vmug leader here in my area and we we do um we haven't so much with with covet of course but we used to do quarterly in-person meetings and we would get sometimes upwards of a hundred it professionals would come out and because it was one of the few it gatherings in the area we wouldn't get even get people to come attend that had nothing to do with vmware they just wanted to talk to other it people in the area okay um and for a few years i teamed up with my cisco account manager and we did like a mini cisco live uh we called it cisco connect vermont and she actually got um cisco marketing to take it over uh but again we got like 150 people to come out that we're all focused on uh cisco products and networking and and there's lots of businesses around here that that do that and we would you know showcase the latest and greatest coming from cisco and it was a great opportunity to to meet other people you know when you start to network like that like you can get your name out there and uh you just just talk to people yeah you know and then the next time an opportunity comes up so i'm like oh yeah that dan guy he was really sharp let's let's see if he's interested in this position i have open here and honest honest to god like that's how i've gotten some of the jobs that i've gotten right is just through uh interactions like that so i highly recommend once life gets closer to somewhat normal and we start doing those in-person gatherings uh keep an eye out look for vmug look for other user groups in the area uh what's another one um the name is escaping me right now what's what's that super popular kind of free it forum help desk software uh starts with nas i think you're not talking about service no that's not free no yeah um it's like free help desk software i don't know spanish works oh it's vice versa yeah yeah spiceworks uh has user groups okay uh there's a there's a local spiceworks group that has a few meetings from from time to time and i think they have a big conference too every once in a while okay yeah i will say for people who do live in small towns um like for me when i do like in which of course this past year that you know we gotta kind of forget about last year but uh previously um we have that cisco connect we we have that in nashville so i would drive up to nashville to go to that and you'd have a lot of people there and you get to talk to fellow nerds that are doing some of the same projects that you are so but but how far away is is nashville for you it's about an hour so about an hour yeah so montreal is like an hour hour and a half from me but crossing the border uh can be a chore sometimes um and then the next closest city that would even have something like that um would have been boston oh wow and that that's that's like a three and a half hour drive for me from where i'm at yeah okay and then outside of boston maybe albany new york i gotcha would have some sort of conference like that sometimes and again that that's almost equidistant that's a three-hour drive from me so almost almost as far away as boston is i got you so so maybe so maybe even some more more remote uh places that maybe that's not an option then yeah so yeah and that was the tough part like until we brought stuff like vmug up here and and that cisco connect event if you wanted to attend a conference like that you you had to go to boston that was like the only option i got you uh and for a long time that there were people that would carpool to go down to boston to go to the various it conferences just to like keep the costs down so work would let them go i got you yeah um well i mean for me it would be worth it let's say if it was like a two or three hour drive i'd probably still go just because of the it's really not even going for the the cisco stuff it's getting to talk to other people and learn how they're using these products and whatnot um like what what kind of what kind of scenarios are they facing that that kind of thing like i had a the last one i went to um there was a guy there who uh he was really good at programming as a network engineer and he was sharing some of his um uh the uh postman you have you have your um crap i'm forgetting what it's called now uh but basically like your your jobs that you run in postman oh he was he was sharing a lot of those with me and it was like oh man i could use that right there and and so he was kind of sharing some of his code with me on that and uh so that was just cool meeting that guy right like that was worth it to me to go up there because i i got to reach out to somebody that you know they he worked in a different field than i do but or a different vertical but yeah it's just nice talking to other people because well okay so let's back up just a little bit because when you're in a small town you don't have a lot of people in your town that talk shop you know with like specifically in the networking right like none of my friends around here do uh yeah and and so when you go to these places you get to finally talk shop with people who know what you're talking about you know right you finally get that opportunity to have those conversations yeah you're absolutely right right because you know you get you get the sales pitch and the sales pitch has you know white papers which are you know always the perfect scenario right and it does it's close to your use case but maybe not not dead on and so always uh you know socializing and meeting with other people to get those additional use cases like oh how are you using it oh hey that sounds a lot like how i could use it oh all right or you know you might be focused on one solution then you talk to somebody else like oh no you don't want to do that i've done that it didn't work here you want to do this exactly yeah yeah no i 100 agree it's nice it's nice networking with uh networkers what what what is what does carl call uh he he dropped it one day in uh in the a1 fans channel um an awesome network of networking networkers yeah there you go it's the art of network engineering that's awesome awesome well on that note i think this one's a wrap dan thank you so much for spending the time it was a great conversation yes sir thank you we'll see you all on the next one see 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 netench 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