this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore teams 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 uh welcome to the art of network engineering podcast my name is aaron weiler uh you may know me as aaron engineered on all your social media platforms aaronenegineer.com you can find me just about anywhere with me i have dan richards in beautiful tennessee america how you doing dan howdy howdy classic classic howdy from dan um he's still trying to figure out how to work the internet so someday in the future we'll get his uh uh hashtag at subnet what is it now how'd he pack it yeah that won the poll so oh my god okay anyway anyway uh also we have uh andy which you can always distinguish by his wonderful philadelphia accent he's trying to throw you off oh man and you can find him uh permit ip andy andy um he's working on spinning up a website too but you can find him on the twitters find us in all the discords we are super stoked because today we have a guest with us and her name is diera footman and she uh is very active in the community that we are all a part of so if you're listening to this and you don't know who she is you might consider yourself crazy you might know her more formally as cc i.e by 30. and normally i wouldn't ask a female how old she is but we can pretty much assume that she's under 30 and is working on her ccie at this point um she's all over the place dear you have like 10 different websites like you have your name like you have dear jfootman right.com what else do you have how else can we find you um on instagram jayfootmen ccie by 30. so both of those um yep and then twitter just ccie by 30. i tried to separate my twitter but no didn't go so well it's hard like you know to pick and choose what you want to put where right yeah yeah that's frustrating so how the heck did you get into all this right because you i think one of the coolest things i saw on on your website uh was uh and it was actually on um your dear j footman website um it was someone taught me and now it's my job to teach someone else did you hear that somewhere or is that just kind of like your life philosophy um so it comes from a tony morrison quote okay um that is up on my ccie by 30 website on my about page but basically the synopsis of it is you know if you are free and empowered it is now your job to free and empower others um so i kind of took that and turned it put the spin on it as far as teaching um you know i had a lot of people who i could ask questions and things that some people might consider stupid questions and they're like you know there are no stupid questions if you don't know you don't know be upfront about it own it and that's how you learn so yeah so now you're just kind of paying it forward i guess is the best way to put that yeah so that leads me to my next question gosh it's almost like uh i'm inside my own head following my own path here so where where did you start um and then we'll kind of like work toward where you are now right so first of all i would love to know what sparked your interest in getting into networking specifically sure um so in high school i went to a high school that offered vocational class or trades um i went in as a graphic designer that was my plan all right i've always loved technology i always knew i wanted to do something with computers so i went in under graphic design ended an informational session my freshman year and the students from the cisco networking academy were presenting and i was like whoa you mean there are people that make the internet work i want to do that nice so i changed to i changed over to cisco um it was a three-year program the first year in high school focused totally yep wow okay so hold on so fresh fresh okay so sophomore got it go ahead yeah so fresh salt freshman year is all just your regular yeah you know academic courses um and then in sophomore year you get to take your vocation or trade class um so the first year which was my sophomore year was all dedicated to you know learning how pcs work so pretty much like a plus curriculum and then in my junior and senior year it focused on networking and then the second half of my senior year we had the opportunity to do internships um with local companies and my internship was with our school system headquarters in their network engineering department it was about four hours a day towards the end of the day and i worked there for the remainder of that semester and then i was invited back to do like a summer internship type deal and then i was brought on as an employee wow uh real quick question before we get to what happens right after that are you still there i am not okay okay cool so this is interesting uh me personally maybe it's just because uh i'm like we made the joke so if you haven't heard uh dear and i were both on um this uh cisco champions radio podcast together about i don't know how long ago was that couple weeks ago and uh we were we were chatting just kind of going through stories and stuff and and i think it was interesting because you've got this like now that i know that you're so early we were talking about ccie but 30 and i was like wow that's funny because i could be ccie by 40 technically then i guess that would make andy cce but cciu by 50. he can't stop time brother but it's impressive first of all but that always begs the question kind of like how we did with taylor uh a couple of episodes ago where it was like you know that's an awful young start like i don't know too many high schools and again maybe it's just because i'm like a little bit ahead of that and you know maybe andy can can echo that as well like i'm a little bit ahead so like there was nothing in high school that had anything to do with like technology whatsoever like i mean it was the 90s but i think that's freaking huge man and the fact that you like parlayed that into a job as a little atypical too because like usually like the next move is to go to college so did you do that as well um i took a year off and then i started school part-time um and i went in under computer science because that's what i thought i needed to do turns out that has absolutely nothing to do with networking you know andy found that that lesson also very very difficult where does that idea come from you know what i mean i thought the same thing like yeah like who the heck's telling everybody that where are we yeah where are we getting that bad information is it counselors i think it's because you're here you hear computer and you think technology yeah right that could be it so so how old are you though dan dan i'm just going to be up front yo bro didn't your mom teach you any manners you don't ask a lady her age darry he's from the south you have to forget he comes from a good place yeah i mean 28. she's 28. okay so see i'm 30 and i graduated in 08. so you're graduating what 2010 yeah okay what part of the country was this school at though it's in baltimore baltimore baltimore city because like when i was in high school we didn't have that either yeah i'm on the same page with uh aaron and andy maybe it's not necessarily a localized thing but like you know because i was in like illinois or something at the time i think and i don't i i guess it's probably up to the school district did they have other cool stuff like because you mentioned the vocational stuff did they have other options for you because you picked technology but like what other options were there car mechanics yeah during that time there was um infantry child care cosmetology culinary art uh autocad graphic design and then cisco awesome they had a they had a pretty wide variety yeah and a few other schools so it really depends on which school you're you're attending some of the other schools have like mechanics um there's a school that's offering plumbing so okay a little bit everything so you had options and you were like all right i heard the cisco guys talking about how they can make the internet work this is cool i want to do that too where did you get the gold then we'll get back to like your timeline here in a second but where did you get the goal then to have the cc ie by 30 was it then no so actually my i've been working for about a year and a half and i was starting to get into the certifications and looking at the certification paths and i've read that the ccie um i saw the little pyramid you know with the ccna at the bottom with the ccie at the top and i read about it and the distinguished weight it holds so i'm like oh i could do that in 10 years so i kind of set it as like a personal goal for myself it's my mount everest i can tell you right now that i think it's gone beyond i speak for everybody when i say this by the way uh it's gone beyond a personal goal at this point it's because you put it out there in the universe i mean your twitter handle is like you know put your money where your mouth is right like that that's gotta be kind of like like a heavy weight on your shoulders right like have you thought about like okay what happens if i don't do that by 30. i have so okay um the more realistic thing now especially as i've been you know getting more into data center work and specifically aci i took a lot of time to you know start digging into that and looking into that i'd at least like to have my first attempt done by then and then go you know reevaluate and then take it as somebody on twitter pointed out you know even at 30 you still have a whole year where you could technically make the goal so okay see that's smart technicalities that's smart like you're the day before your 31st birthday yeah like just knock it out of the park right like happy birthday to you welcome to your 30s type of thing that's better than what i was thinking i thought worst casey scenario diary you could just say yo ccie by 20 30. oh dude yeah holy crap you could just drop a 20 in front of that and it's just it turns into a year instead of your age i mean you have a way out if you guys that's all wow dude andy oh my god you're welcome okay there's your fallback plan if you did if you wanted one um but that's a cop out we don't want that we want you i guess so many cautionary dms like you're putting so much pressure on yourself and i'm like okay just just thanks just take a deep breath here yeah why would somebody do this though what's the worst that happens you're you're cci be 32 or 33. you know it's still it's still amazing i didn't even get into tech until my 30s and i'm just blown away that you had you were a network engineer when you graduated high school right with a paying job yeah like that's just oh my god if you do the time i'm gonna go cr yeah i'm gonna go cry in the corner for a little bit i'll be right back andy if you if you do the timeline if you got your first tech job in your 30s and dear got one out of high school you guys started at the same time you're right behind me buddy yeah well you know we're not talking about me we're talking about you we were both in high school in the 90s yeah we were so all right so you got the job you at this point okay so you graduate high school they offered you a job because of the vocational uh experience that you had did you have after you completed the vocational stuff did you have a ccna at that point i did not at the time um due to some technicalities with the program so i ended up having to get my ccna on my own okay which is fine yeah i was more so after having a job that you know wasn't retail or fast food or anything um i think it's also important to point out i was i was not making any money what do you what do you mean you don't work there anymore so so just give everybody an example because i started so as an intern and this was up until i was brought on as so the city has what they call temp employees which is essentially a contractor but you are under the payroll of the city i started as an intern at minimum wage 725 when i was brought on under that contract position it was about 11 11 or 12 bucks wow an hour and then there was a restructure and everybody who was a temp employee um which is the terminology they used was then moved to various contracting agencies so then from there i started making like dollars an hour that was the big time yeah i thought i was falling i bet you damn near doubled your salary you joking me you're bawling so so when you first started at this at the did you say it was the state that you were working for the city school system so school system headquarters gotcha so when you started there like what were you doing so pretty much i was on a network engineering team but i was more like a tech which pretty much meant i did all the grunt work that the engineers didn't want to do pulling cables installing equipment that kind of stuff yep doing tickets um dealing with users all the research work all fell on me wow nice it's a great way to learn heck yeah trial by fire i guess you could say especially when they're only paying you seven bucks an hour so that actually you know now that i think about it okay so you graduate in 2010 minimum wage is 7.25 or something i actually have no idea um because when a minimum wage for me was like 4 25. all right andy um but and he was like you could get a coke for a nickel you could just feel how old andy is you have to look at that so so because you mentioned like it was better than working in retail or fast food or whatever but i gotta imagine that like retail was at the time probably willing to pay you more than 7.25 an hour right definitely so then why so then why the way i looked at it was i could you know go to college and do retail or i could use this time to gain some experience you know the money at the time was pretty much just you know my mind to like spend and not be responsible with because i was straight out of high school still at home so i was more so like you know i can sit here i i speak of it now like that time at baltimore city schools was like my college um because i got to learn so many different things i was super underpaid but the experience to me outweighed outweighed the time i spent there but then it did eventually get to a point where i'm like okay i need more money i love that but it's interesting college right so you pay to go to college and you get a degree or whatever a little bit of experience i guess technically because you were doing stuff but what you did instead was actually let me let my college be someone paying me it could have been a dollar an hour actually it could have been free they could you could have been volunteering there and in theory your roi would have been still much higher than if you would have paid 30k for a cs degree right we obviously think you did all the right things that's why we had you on here but um so we don't want to gas you up too much but i think that was a smart idea i i like what you said because we always do these a and b comparisons when we talk to people and you and you see it all the time i'm sure like people on twitter uh especially you know like hey you know what should i do first right what is your advice to people that say like should i go to college should i get a job should i get certified what do you say to those people because i know they're asking you i say if you can do all three at the time i was doing i was in school part-time again computer science yeah um i'll explain how i pivot pivoted from that in a second but i was doing that part time and what led me to make this decision was you know i'm like oh i'm out of high school i technically have three years of experience be it lab experience let me see you know what's out here job-wise and i was looking at these job requirements and i'm like you know i don't have enough experience for this yet so do i take this time off go get the degree i had already you know being an intern been able to talk to some people who've been in the industry for a little while and the common theme was you know if you can figure out how to stay here or stay you know doing networking while you're going to school do it because you know i was in school for four years and then it took me you know another year to get some certs and then i finally got a job that was you know what i thought i should have been making or what i thought i should have been doing out of college you know just taking that advice and then doing my own research and i'm seeing all these jobs and i'm like i don't have enough experience to really you know make the money i would have wanted to have been making so i'm like well you know here's this job the organization was you know be it a school system budgets are tight of course um so there wasn't there wasn't a lot of you know hiring out for new engineers or bringing in contractors unless it was something like super specific so it was i'm like okay you know i can work here i can learn um pivot around a little bit see see what i like and stack my skills so that's kind of how i looked at it so this is this is one thing that we have yet to mention and it's maybe all of our faults uh i say all of us but like you know meet dan and andy and aj it's my fault i'll just take that i'll take the heat but we but we always do that right i even asked you the same question i was like hey what do you do when people say do i get either or and we always say hey it doesn't matter but whatever you do because you have basically three choices so whatever you do just do it well and work your butt off i have yet to even think about what you just said which is why don't you just do all three and get off your ass like i'm stealing that you didn't say that your ass part but i i i added that color commentary to it because i felt it gave me a little bit of dare did you have guidance or a mentor or because when i was 18 you know i when i graduated high school i was drinking beer playing beach volleyball for sure like that was my life aspiration at 18. pictures or didn't happen andy so how i mean you just seemed wise beyond your years i mean maybe i was just a goofball but i don't know any 18 year olds that you know know up from down and you just really seem to have a clear picture of you know you know you needed experience you know that you weren't going to get paid up front but it would pay off in the long run i mean these are like wise choices that i'm just blown away by do you have any guidance or you're just kind of wise beyond your years i asked a lot of questions so of course in high school all of our counselors were like no you just need to go straight to college yep go to college go to college go to college and i'm like i knew i wanted i listened to those idiots i knew i wanted a degree but i did not want to like spend more time in school um i'm like well i'm going to get a degree at some point but do i really want to get out of school and then go right back into school and not so much so i knew you know one of the selling points of doing the vocational the vocational classes is you know oh you're you're gonna get you'll be able to get a job straight out of high school so i i definitely signed up for the internship because i'm like you know this would be a good chance for me to kind of test the waters and see if i really like it and while on that internship ship i just asked all of the people who would talk to me questions like how did you get into tech what was your pathway do you how did you feel college paid off for you and i got so many different perspectives i got the perspectives of engineers who were like i didn't go to college at all but i'm letting you know you don't go to college you need to have these certs and you best believe somebody with a degree even though you have the search will probably make more money than you until you get to a certain point i'm like okay and i talked to the people who had a degree and they're like yeah i did a computer science degree but it really didn't help me because i'm not doing programming or anything but you know i did get a job but what i found was i struggled because i didn't have the certs so i'm like okay this makes sense so i asked anybody who would talk to me a ton of questions about their experience and what they would recommend what they would do differently if they were starting over um you know combine that with my own research and i was like all right i got a plan let's wing it and see all right every you know every every like 60 seconds you like you hit me with like this like epiphany um and you just did it again so this is crazy so instead of saying okay how did you get here because i see you're because right now you are a senior network engineer and so when at that time you were asking senior network engineers hey how did you get here you know instead of saying how did you get here all you did was flip the question around just a little bit and you said if you could do it any differently what would you do i can guarantee you that the answers you got probably helped you more than we can even like quantify at this point because like i'm sure if we all looked back um andy especially i think he just said it uh he probably wouldn't have been playing beach volleyball and drinking beers right uh i probably wouldn't have wasted my life either playing video games and you know being in crappy bands but the forward thinking even to ask a question like that backwards is crazy to me uh and i'm stealing that so thank you for that also you might want to quote that and put it on one of your websites because oh don't worry i'll quote you i'll put your name on it but um so so so you're at the you're asking a bunch of questions you're at the school system right you're working for the city um so you really you hadn't you hadn't ventured too far at this point right you were just kind of like going through this path like that was almost like you know paved a little bit right because they got you a job out of high school uh how long did you last at that first job so i was there a total of five years wow i'll tell you when it got real um i was about two years in we had a meeting our manager came in and he's like they're reviewing everyone's qualifications i understand the value of technical certs i'm going to back for everyone who has technical certs if you don't have a cert you need to get one and i and you have about six to eight months to get it done and i'm like oh crap i don't have my ccna because even though i was forward thinking and you know making these plans i did kind of procrastinate a little bit on the ccna because i'm like this is an 800 page book two 800 page books at the time do i really want to read this and not really no i don't i don't think a single person on this planet has has gotten a delivery from cisco press and been super freaking excited about getting to page 376 which puts you halfway through the book like that's right it's like going to the dentist yeah i know it's good for you but it's not going to be fun it's not going to be fun so what what what what did they say though because they it sounds like what quote-unquote coming to jesus moment so they they had a meeting and they told you uh you have six to eight months to get a cert were they like gonna fire people that didn't or since they were laying so many people off if you had a cert that person was going to go to bat for you and try to save you yeah pretty much okay and also along with that i was pregnant with my son and i'm like okay it's no longer just me i am going to have to and babies are super expensive i was shocked by how expensive they were i'm like all right i need i need more money now um i need to actually like this this was fun money saved a little bit of it didn't you know i'm paying a few bills here and there but for the most part the money was just mine to spend so now i'm like all right i gotta get you know more money get more financially sound and go um at the time i was working i was i would do three eight hour days at the office and then two four hour days and the other four hours i was going to community college so i'm kind of sitting down and i'm like all right i gotta i gotta wrap these classes up i gotta get this cert i talked to my manager i'm like hey you know i wanna i wanna make more money they're like okay well you need to be here more i'm like cool and they're like you need to at least get your c sent so i can justify bringing you in for the additional eight hours um because there's a cost to that and i'm like all right cool got it i got my orders i know what i need to do i get the books um we had cbt nuggets at the time so i'm reading the book some of the stuff i'm recognizing you know from working and doing you know port configurations here and there some of the stuff i'm sitting there like i have no idea what any of this means so i took i read the book cover to cover i went through the cbt nuggets took a thousand and one practice tests i get to take the first test i fail ah how bad all right i kind of uh i don't even remember i think that one was pretty bad because i'm like there was some stuff i was still missing on the practice test yeah but i'm like you know what let me just go in and get a feel for the exam at least so then i have a little bit of a better idea of where i need to go that's a good strategy so the areas of weakness were um subnetting which i was terrible at at the time and and routing and weighing technologies and those two were pretty much things that i didn't touch at all um so i'm like okay well i you know i have something i need to spend time on so i take the next month and i'm hammering away at it i'm re-watching all the videos i'm rereading the chapters i'm looking up you know different other videos this is how i discovered chris bryant and how i finally understood subnetting so thanks chris bryant yeah dude first of all stop for one second because shout out to chris bryant because i i'm a fan some people are not they think he's a little too dry oh dude i love christmas i think he's the best hands down i love energy from guys like jeremy and you know things like that but chris just has a way man like and and he'll put little jokes in there and you just gotta be on your toes because he'll say something and it'll get it'll it'll get you like if you're really paying attention you'll be like wow the one thing he always says he's like he's like you know he's explaining something he'll be like well the name is the recipe with this one i love that anyway is that the the bulldog yeah yeah yeah i like that it goes deep yeah you know same he's in the devices a lot and he goes deep and you're gonna learn it yeah same and he translates it to playing english right which was something at the time i wasn't aware that cisco has their own language of how they explain things yeah all the tests too right yeah and it doesn't click and then i'll hear somebody else explain and it's like oh i get it now yeah why did we need these extra 30 words but okay um so i'm hammering away at it and i get to the second test and i fail by five points so at this point i've paid 300 out of my own pocket because they did not cover it i am about three this i failed it in march so the deadline that was coming was in july that's when the fiscal year starts so i'm like oh my god like i have to get both parts of this test and i'm failing this one and so i had like a mini meltdown honestly so wait hold on are you still pregnant at this point no okay you had your kid i have a yep no i i didn't mean are you pregnant now i meant like during the story were you where are you okay okay i just want to make sure that i was like i don't know how you would still be pregnant um so i'm like okay uh let's you know i had my moment i took the rest of the week off i didn't look at anything i'm like let me just you know chill take my mind off it for a little while wow start back on sunday so on sunday i break out my score report i'm looking at what i got wrong it's still routing um subnetting was better but not where i i think subnetting was a part of it and then at the time frame relay was on the exam yes yeah oh i remember that one time we talked about this like in a couple of episodes ago like how awful that crap was because yeah dude because i i think you and i dear i think we took the same test because i took the ic and d1 and then the ic and d2 and there's frame relay on there and i actually mentioned this that like i remember the topology to one of these frame relay questions to this day like it was a bunch of olympic cities as the names of the cities yup and it was like find this find that and i was like and then at the time you had to like you had to type in the commands yeah for like the simlets yeah yeah that was awful awful so i started going over um when technologies again and making tons of notes and note cards and looking over the commands just religiously just running them through running them through running them through i get to my third time i pass it i'm nice super over the moon i take it my boss is like great let's get you in here so then i go up to working um 40 hours a week start working on my ccna i didn't get my cc dna until i think august or september of that year luckily my c cent was enough it was a cert they just really wanted you to have a cert so it was a certain um i did pass my ccna on the first time and the way i approached it was completely different from what i did with the cset and this is pretty much how i still approach cisco exams i made copies of at the time they used to come with those dvds that had like the appendices in them so i would print off the do i know this already appendix oh yeah every chapter i would read the chapter i would do the do i notice tests document what i got wrong read the chapter specifically focusing on the the topics that were covered in those questions do the do i know this exam again see where i was make a note of where i was still weak at so i did that all the way through the whole book once i finished the book i would review my notes go back over to do i notice questions again and then look for additional resources to help me with what i was still weak on so i also realized did you hold on did you did you do you know have you ever like researched like how humans learn because i have i've done like a lot of that stuff and the reason why i'm asking is because excuse me what you just described is the best way for a human being to learn so what you said about printing off the the do i know this already tests without even reading the chapter trying to answer the questions writing down what you got wrong and then researching yourself i could go on and on and on about how many different little pieces of that we're helping you solidify the content more than someone just reading it and then you know doing some chicken scratch and then going back and reading your notes over and over again right so i have you ever like looked into like efficiencies like that at that time no you just did it yeah i all i knew was the way i approached the first time it was wrong work and it cost me money dude was all over the place it sounds to me like money uh seems to be uh your biggest life lesson uh i don't even know how to put that but it seems to be the thing that's been teaching you the most possibly yeah i've never even thought about that like i need more money all i knew was you had the kid right you can't afford to pay exactly yeah when they're going to take your job from me get assert or buy i mean that's just you know that'll motivate anybody for sure yeah that's that's that's i just thought it was cool that you pointed that out because i've been wanting to like talk about that a lot more frequently actually maybe maybe we'll get you on again and and we'll discuss that because uh you're you're dead on with your your what i would call like the perfect approach to getting the exams and sometimes you only learn that by failing especially 300 worth so sorry i didn't mean to cut you off by the way i'm just really good at cutting people off um and yes it's an engineering treat my mom my mom always said do what you're good at you know uh so you you fail i think that's all right right so you failed by five points right and you researched you printed off all the stuff you figured out that hey i'm still kind of uh lacking some efficiencies in wan or routing and let me just go hard at that was that the next step oh no for so for the season after i failed by five points and um i think i spoke too fast um so after i failed by five points i took a break for the rest of that week and then i came back to it on sunday looked at the areas that i was weaker in um got on packet tracer got the book started you know labbing it out which was something i i hadn't been doing all along which i probably should have been and you know making notes on the commands running through the commands you know how to set up i i think what was it delsies yup was the biggest thing interface dlc how to check it making sure i understood the full the full amount the full command because what i had gotten into the habit of doing is you know you're on a cisco switcher router and you just tab and it's there or you hit question mark and it's there ah so i had to train myself to know you need to type out the full command so even at work i was typing out the full command because on the test they didn't let you tab or do question mark or anything so i went back in i think it was april when i passed the c cent i passed that management was like great you're good you gotta assert awesome you're safe go sit down like okay cool i took a month off and they they're like no but still get your ccna but you're okay for now oh yeah good job but but you're not done you're not done yet pat you on the back a little bit so when i started taking the ic and d2 i that's when i started you know i printed off the do i notice already quiz i got a little bit more um organized with my notes took the quiz before i read the chapter took the quiz after i read the chapter made the note of where i was weak at once i finished the book looked at all the areas i was weak at once i finished the book i took a practice exam and pretty much the results of the practice exam lined up with where i was weak at organize where i was weak at by you know what do i have what am i not touching at work which was routing and then the stuff i'm touching at work was just more of a you know let me make sure i really understand these commands and just practice them through so then i laughed i looked at additional reese videos um chris bryant some other random people on udemy that i don't remember um for like routing and then i passed my see the ic and d2 on the first try so nice how about what i did on the first time it was great yes i did it awesome hell yeah i love that yeah the first time i just kind of got the book read through it made some little chicken scratch notes looked at some cbt nuggets looked at some chris bryant videos made some notes like i got added to the notes yeah it's in a practice test you you you fall into this thing and like i did the same thing it's like you know every test that you've ever taken like throughout your life whether it be high school or elementary school or college or whatever they really aren't hard right like look looking back right because now i did the exact same thing i almost have the exact same story you did with both icnds and i did the same thing i was like gosh dang that was harder than i thought and i'm only the opposite but the thing i was the best at was subnetting and i'm like keep giving me subnetting questions and sure enough they knew that right away they were like that's the last one you're getting of those here's some ipv6 brother sucker so got you got you so now you got the ccna then what happens so i get my ccna and i go back to work and everyone's celebrating and i become the go-to person for passing the ccna everyone's asking me for tips what it's like yeah wow for my other other co-workers they're like so yeah what did you do to because i'm not getting this and i'm actually doing this wow um so i'm you know helping people with what i learned you know here's what works for me pay attention to how cisco words things that definitely trip me up a few times and make sure you know the command in its entirety because you can't tab and you can't question mark um pro tip so then things are dying down go ahead no no you go ahead oh uh so then things were dying down everyone got their search we kind of go back into our lull of work i'm doing a little bit more oh and also to mention the entire time we're all studying for cisco exams we're not working on cisco equipment so that's great what kind of equipment was two different languages it was extreme school budget extreme networks yeah school budget so so now you're the you're the uh you're the champion over there they're like oh my gosh how did you do it when you guys all all sat in the same room together at one point and they scared the hell out of you and yeah it sounds like you were the i mean correct me if i'm wrong here were you the only one that did it no there were a couple of other people who passed okay um some people decided you know do i have to do a ccna or can i get a cert in what i'm actually doing so we had some wire some people who were primarily focused on wireless so they did wireless uh some people who were doing um phone systems got phone certs got it or just you know renewed search they already had so you were there i think out of i think there were four of us who went for the ccna and then every out of the team of eight or nine people everyone else went for certs more specific to what they were doing or what they wanted to do nice so they and all the people that wanted the ccna that didn't get it they were looking at you like okay how the heck did you do this yeah for study tips so were you still at the school uh district at the time okay i was there until 2015. all right so this was in 2013 the beginning of 2013. still at the school because you were there for five years got a ccna out of it how much longer did you stay there after you got the ccna about two more years okay so yeah you did you did your due diligence there right i feel like putting your time it's respectable it's not like uh you're not like dan over here who doesn't even know how to apply for jobs monster inc or monster.com or something monster monster inc oh my gosh that was a movie dan dan's applying for jobs on the movie yeah it was a pixar movie dude what's the problem picture is that hiring network guys god bless so much i'll tell you imagineers yeah yeah why'd you leave the school district uh more money i was gonna say i bet i know i bet i know yep yeah you guys see cnn you looked around right so after i got my ccna was when the real fun started because then i got to be included in the project work i was no longer just doing operational stuff so the best part about working there was again you got to touch all elements of networking so i did some wireless i did some data center yeah a little bit of security not much um we had this big all hands project to do network access control that was i mean like the whole team plus some people from other teams and one big conference room pushing configuration on the phone helping people troubleshoot that was a nightmare i learned a lot from it but it was a nightmare i know 802.1x inside and out now sometimes there's only one way to learn yeah worked on worked on some cool data center projects uh with that's how i got introduced to the nexus and then in 2015 they did massive layoffs um and a good portion of our team very specialized individuals were let go um you really may come to us you were still there i was still there yeah okay um and then you know they come to us and they're like hey we want to uh redo our call center we have five we only want one can you make that happen and we're like you let that person go so that's how i got into uccx literally it had to be done we got the news over the thursday before memorial day weekend my manager's like well we gotta get it done so and we can't bring anybody in so me and my colleague are like okay uh we'll figure it out spent memorial day weekend looking at some crash course uccx videos came in that tuesday looked at what was currently set up we're like all right let's you know build some scripts to play with and see what we come up with and like uh two weeks worth of testing uh we presented what we built they're like yeah make it even more streamlined than that we're like okay um condensed it they approve it we push it monday morning we're getting calls like yeah i don't want our number on the menu anymore no one should be calling us dude let me just you know this you know this now right like the the the voip world is so awful funny that i still thought i wanted to do it after that really i did wow so i i left i left the school system i stepped into the contracting world i did not like the the government contracting world didn't like it um great learning experience though i worked on nexus and ice that was where i first got to really get into ice we demoed it at the school system but at the time the cost was astronomical i still think it is and you're talking about so when we say ice just so everybody else knows ice is the uh cisco's um identity services engine i believe is this right yes so uh just wanna make sure that we pointed that out sometimes people are like what the hell are they talking about yeah i worked on the nexus did some more just you know enterprise networking deployed some 3850s got a crash course in those so it was a cool learning experience so then i'm like all right i don't like this this world anymore i wanna i want a new job um you're in the culture you didn't like the kind of the government it was just a whole contracting process that i i wasn't a fan of yeah it's a big bump in pay though right going from it was it did your hourly rate jump pretty yeah yeah um it was just too much too many rules that i wasn't used to and didn't really like and didn't really make sense to me as far as like process and this was a good fit for you i kind of felt like it yeah it made my job harder so i'm like okay like well i was pretty good at voip so i took a a job doing voip for a continuing care retirement community or a group of continuing care retirement communities they're all across the us that was interesting um i know we all joke about you know the network going down until you have had a voip outage no network and then there's level 10. hey one of the cool things one of the cool things about a voip outage is no they just come to your desk yeah right hey you don't you and you're always you're always not busy enough right so they always walk up like hey you don't look like you're doing anything can you it's like okay so uh i also did a video deployment there so we deployed a bunch of cisco video units um the big massive mx which is like the two dual screen thing with the cameras that follow you that was super cool and then the little small desktop ones that just have like the personal camera so that was that was a cool project um security solution like video for just security monitoring is that what that is no no it's like their conferencing thing so like you ever been in like a like a like a room with like a big conference table and then like instead of two white boards they have like two screens and there's like a bunch of cameras pointed at you it's almost like you're in a newsroom yeah sorry for not clarifying that uh video conferencing um so that was fun it was a good learning experience got to hone my teaching skills because i was working with a lot of the on-site technicians to deploy this stuff so training them getting them to a point where they could train other people at their at their site and going from there um but then i'm like you know what i don't really like voip and i really want to get back into networking so i started looking for networking jobs and came across actually a recruiter reached out to me and she's like you know we have had a existing relationship and i had worked with her in the past and she's like hey so i know you want to get back into networking i got this job i don't really have a posting for it yet but i think you'll be perfect and it's in the heart of the city and i'm like normally i would not even be interested in that because there was no job wreck but i'm like i trust you so i'm going to go for it and she's like all right i'll send your resume over got a phone screen pass the phone screen like hey come in interview with the team interview with the team did a second interview um with a little bit more people from outside of the networking group uh did a lunch i think all together it was like three rounds i got an offer they're like you're exactly what we're looking for and actually let me backtrack because there's an important component to what helped me get this position outside of just my experience and the person so during the time because you said the recruiter you knew and so she reached out to you right yeah okay um i wasn't the only person she reached out to there were other candidates oh oh my god she was freaking cheating on you once it got posted once it got posted she was definitely you know she just gave me a heads up for it so i got first dibs before it was posted but i definitely was competing with other people um while i was at erickson so after i passed my ccna i didn't really take any more certs i kind of just learned what i needed to learn for the job don't be like me please continue to get your certs so hey can you just say that one more time seriously continue to get your search thank you keep them current um so it's like 20 17. now my ccna has expired and i'm like okay and at the time for people who are just learning about cisco post cert pocalypse you had to retake your ccna before you could take anything else yeah so that sucks yeah yes it was a pre-wreck right so to her point um if you're if you are new to the cisco world it used to be that you had to take a ccna before you got a ccnp so basically what you're getting at is normally in that circumstance you just would have went to the ccnp because you know the stuff clearly because you already passed it but at the time they would have made you go back into the ccna retake that and then take your ccnp i'm like okay i gotta get my ccna again wasn't too enthused about it um so at the time one of my co-workers was super active in different like voip communities and like on voip twitter which was apparently a thing it's all tech twitter now so i'm like oh cool oh so i had a different a personal twitter account so i'm on there you know looking at people and i'm like oh that's so cool like people have blogs and i'm like i should start a blog but what am i going to blog about well i can share my study notes at the very least for content so i was up one night and i've always loved writing i've always been a good a decent write writer um it was it's definitely been a subject i enjoy so i'm like oh well let's why not write about tech so i'm like well at the time i'm looking at retaking the ccna and i'm like this time i'm not going to stop i'm going to go straight through i'm going to get my ccie by the time i'm 30 and that's where the name came from boom there it is that was and that was in 2017. the freaking origin story we finally we got to it that's what happened yeah that was in 2017 so my plan was to blog my ccna journey um and that's what you did you got your ccna again and started writing about it i got it in 2018. yep okay did you take the composite this time around yep the one exam yeah did you pass the first time i did you did or you didn't i did yes nice i'm like all right cool so i got this blog i'm engaging in the community i wasn't super active on twitter because at the time there were more people on instagram so i'm like super active on instagram i'm getting into twitter i'm following everyone and i think in 2018 was right around the time i i discovered dejuan and lab every day so i started following him and network chuck and i'm like oh this is cool like i'm building a community kind of i hadn't gotten to the point where i was like actually asking people like sliding into their dms asking questions but i was just kind of admiring from afar i had the blog up and running so when i get this interview at the job that i'm at now which ironically enough is in uh digital media and blogging and newsletters they're like yeah we did a look up on you on social media and we see you have this blog and you're super active in the tech community and we think that's really cool and i'm like oh thanks and they're like and i see you're writing about some of the stuff you know we're doing so it's really cool to see you know your kind of understanding of things and i'm like oh great that's awesome so that was at my second interview i go back to my job after lunch and at the time i had alerts set up so i could see when people were on my site because i was just trying to see you know get a gauge for how interested people were and this ip address kept coming up so i type it in to who is and it's the place that i just interviewed at so they had actually sent my blog out for people to review ah nice dude that's so rad there's a lot of personal branding there we talked about this in very very great detail and i i love that the proof is in the pudding here folks and one of the things they were really looking for was someone who was a really good communicator because you know and i think this is a common theme in it period but you know you get those people who are great engineers but not so great at communicating it to other people who aren't engineers so that was a huge need um so that was definitely got me brownie points and got me in the door so nice blog your experience guys or vlog or podcast it it helps it's uh or to our living resume or to our earlier point get off your ass and do all three so what's the coolest thing you're doing in the new job i'm looking at your profile on linkedin it says cisco aci have you been dabbling a little bit of that and the follow-up to that is have you spoken to micheline murphy who's apparently the aci goddess that we spoke to recently i have um i've asked her a couple of one-off questions i haven't had the chance to sit down and just do like a deep dive with her she want to reach out again she will blow your freaking mind i'm gonna tell you right now yeah it's intimidating yeah how are you how are you liking aci i have a love hate relationship with you i think i understand i was building contracts today at work you know micheline said the same thing and and she's she's about as deep in it as you can get like her damn near initials are aci at this point all i know is you need an epg yeah epg that's all i know michelin said get an epg so i'm on it it's good where's it at andy i don't know man which which tenant is it in oh so how's this new gig do you like it you think you'd be there a while you're happy it's good yeah it's it's good it's a lot um it's a lot all at once i'll say that which is good because i'm learning a lot um this is one of the few companies i've been at that aren't afraid to you know try new things mainly because they can afford it budgets matter guys um and they they they do a good job of investing in training and my number one thing i'd have to say is they have this philosophy of the best idea wins so they don't care what your title is if you have an idea and you can you know present it hey let's take a crack at it do a proof of concept see where we can go okay so that's a that's pretty cool culture then so i have two questions i know we're getting close to the hour so are you working on your ccmp now yes studying for encore yep uh ticket december 1st wow okay how you feel about it i'm supposed to be studying for it and i'm stuck in spanning tree hell chapter four um i started and stopped a few times so what what's your thoughts look like like do you read the ocg you're doing cbt same with ccna you did some kind of strategy so and i tweeted about this a little while ago because what i noticed was the video courses aren't in order of the chapters so i'm like am i doing something wrong by reading this book cover to cover right and everyone's like the more senior engineers on twitter were like yeah i don't do that anymore i just follow the exam blueprint and you'll find that the videos are laid out like the exam so this time i've been reading throughout the week and i'll read and highlight and then at the end of the week i'll take my notes based off my highlights and then watch the videos okay when you say the videos you're talking about cbt nuggets videos or yeah i started out with ine um i'm liking cbt nuggets a little bit better though so why is that and i asked this because i've been doing the same thing but i actually like ine a little better i like ine better for in-depth stuff yeah concur concur um so i watch more of their stuff for like routing things that i really need to get in the weeds with whereas cbt nuggets is more of a you know i read this i have a good understanding of it i just want to kind of solidify that and sometimes i found that in in either one but particularly depending on who's doing the cbt nuggets especially jeremy jeremy will throw out a little tidbit of oh yeah and by the way here's something you'll learn in the field that's not on the book it's like oh okay he does do that that's super helpful so you're going to knock encore out in december what's your specialty going to be advanced routing services dance routing do you know when you're going to how long you're going to take to study for that one and schedule it you know i'm looking to do it sometime in february damn so funny story i took the i was scheduled for training for it so i was actually supposed to take it this summer but i ended up being the only engineer on the data center side our other engineer left so that was fun i get to support everything by myself so i kind of had to take a step back to fill in do some research and fill in and be on call and juggle a bunch of projects so a little bit of time that's amazing i'm trying to get the attention the first attempt then before i turn 30. well you got to get to that ccie right so that's why we gotta knock this mp out and how are you going to study for ie is there like a whole is it like ine everybody does and v whatever so i took i've been reading a couple of people's blogs on how they approached it um i do know the book everyone recommends that you start with is i'm gonna butcher the title but it's bridging the gap between the mp and the ie um so i'm gonna start there and then go in with the same approach with the exam blueprint and just knock out the exam topics um using the books cert guides and there are a couple other books people recommend you look at tcpip volume one and two um there's a russ white book i think it's optimal right routing design there's some bgp books some ospf books i have an entire playlist do you have any ideas safari do you have any idea how long you're going to study for the ie before you take the written you're just going to see how there is no writing anymore there's no written oh yeah the encore now is like pre so you're just going to study for the lab and go lab right is that the deal yep the last question i have for you diara i want to flip your own question at you what would you have done differently in your career thus far the question that you were asking those people at your internship is there anything you would have done differently lessons learned which ties into what would you tell somebody new like yourself you know that person trying to get started going in i would have continued getting my certs i would not have just stopped at the ccna um and i would have specialized a little bit sooner because even though i have this 10-year experience i've only been specializing in data center for about four-ish you have to specialize like route switch is just kind of expected now right like yeah you know people ask you what you do you're like i'm a network engineer okay well you know what's your thing like oh rout switch they kind of look at you funny i've had that in interviews like well you know wrestle which is a given what's your thing you know like oh all right i guess i'll do cloud or automation i don't know don't yell at me oh and another thing don't fight learning the new thing which i was just recently reminded of because i started going down the cloud path at the beginning of quarantine i'm like eh i don't really need to know this in depth i just need to know my way around it and then boom i got assigned a cloud project so i'm learning cloud now which uh which one are you learning aws azure google like aws aws yeah and there'll probably be some azure a little bit later yeah the big boy thanks for hanging out with us uh dear we we really really really appreciate it i've been here it was a great chat so where all the places we can find you it's ccie by 30 right that's one of them yep so ccie by 30 on twitter instagram and ccie by 30.com i also have a youtube channel not much content up there i plan to use that to document my labbing journey for my ccie and then dieraj footman for all of my uh foodie adventures and fun on instagram and drjutman.com if you just want to read my backstory yeah you could see all of our ip addresses hitting it yeah i turned that off okay that was fun when that when i first when i first got started but then after a while it was that's noise funny i feel a little bit better because i looked it up and cisco networking academy didn't start until 1997. so it didn't exist when i was in high school i love that so that's my excuse on why i didn't start cisco network academy in high school it didn't exist that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it and it cost a nickel a loaf we had just invented we had just discovered fire so yeah the wheel was an amazing invention network diagrams on stone tablets but real quickly too i want to talk about all the people that have actually gotten some serious w's in the in the win column in the past like month or so some people on our discord channel um dear are you on our discord channel or no i just joined okay cool so there's some people we have but we have a hashtag hashtag winning channel and in that winning channel like people are just putting in hey i passed x and x and y z or whatever you know aj obviously has been doing a lot of um juniper stuff lately the guy's a freaking machine at this point he's like knocked out like 10 of these in a month um um mila just got her jncia i believe in the past couple weeks and uh pong you tracer got his ccna so you know a little golf clap for him good job good job to him um and more more w's coming hopefully daryl we could share your ccnp w in uh on december 1st but we'll we'll check back in with you maybe sometime and and do a follow-up and see where you're at with the the ccie but 30 journey fill in everybody definitely sweet so thanks for coming again i know kind of speak for all of us um and aj who couldn't be here unfortunately but from all of us you know we really appreciate your time we know how valuable it is um because you could be studying um for andy this is just an excuse not to study but for you it's probably it's probably a pain in the butt um so thanks for coming um we appreciate you uh it for everybody else out there art of network engineering we'll put all of dear stuff in the footnotes so you can get to our website find her ads all of her stuff and quite honestly if you're not following her on twitter or instagram you're probably living under a rock already anyway so you probably won't hear this but uh it until we get chat again um any final words of wisdom for the for all our listeners out there every expert was once a beginner on that note thank you for listening and we'll see you guys next week 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 netench that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineering.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