This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast. In this podcast, we look for teams, technologies, and talented people. We aim to bring you information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers. Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. My name is Aaron Wyler, also known as Aaron Engineered. With me I have AJ. Hey guys. And Andy. Hey. And it's been a heck of a week, actually really been kind of like a heck of a year. And that's kind of the subject of what we want to get into today is not just remote work, I guess, but more of the impact on us and then the industry and. maybe some predictions from us and our magical crystal balls that we just have laying around the house and never get to use. Uh, so one thing I also want to touch on is cause a lot of things have changed and real quickly while we're on that subject, because it's going to force us to go in here and talk about this lovely pandemic that we're all dealing with is someone in this room less than 24 hours ago. has passed a very difficult test and I'll give you a hint wasn't me? Andy was it you? It was not. It was not so okay. This is different because and this kind of rolls into what we were talking about because I think it's important that we discuss the fact that you can now take tests from your house. So so AJ what happened? What'd you take? Oh man. So I took the Encore exam. Which is what? It was my, the CCNP Encore, the Enterprise Core Networking exam. Okay. And it was my third attempt. Okay. And I was so elated to actually pass this thing, man. It was just so exciting to get under my belt. So let's, I wanna make sure that we nail down the timeline here. You've taken Encore twice. This is the third time. Okay, did you try the old CCNP? Oh, did I? Okay. Go on. So the CCNP journey started for me last February. I took the switch exam, hot off my CCDA. I mean, it was literally like weeks apart from attempts and I passed it and then work got busy, but I started in on route. Long story short. I took route and T-shoot eight times between the two. I attempted route five times in total and T-shoot three times in total. And I came really close on a bunch of those times, but I just couldn't seal the deal before the changeover to new certs. Okay, so you studied a bunch, you still ultimately failed a ton of times, right? That's... Yeah. That's an insane. Yeah, 10 times. 10. 10 exams. So it was the eight shots at route and T-Shoot and then the two shots at Encore. So I had 10 failures in between the pass yesterday and the last time I passed the Cisco exam. This is crazy. I mean, I always retweet it, right? When I see it, I'm like, this is what it looks like, folks. Determination. But I don't think anybody ever really realized what exactly the definition of determination was because, okay, so 10 times, you would have failed it one more time, I'd have to take my shoes off the count, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, dude, that's so many times. Like, where do you find, I mean, I have so many questions, but where do you find it in you, whatever it is, to just keep going? It's just this, can't stop, don't wanna stop. It's almost like a, it's almost like a video game. Right? You know, you're playing the game, you're after that prize, you want to save the princess, and then you die. You fall down the hole, you get hit by a turtle shell. I'm talking about Mario, obviously. I love Mario. And you just, you go back and you play again. Like if you got to start from the beginning, so what? Who cares? Like, and I will tell you that I think the only reason why I have that mentality about that is because I am fortunate enough to work for a company that pays for my whether or not I pass or fail. And so that gives me a little bit of freedom to just go for it and to keep going for it. And I will keep going for it until somebody says, no, you spent too much money, take a break or something like that. And then I'd probably pay for it out of my own pocket. But for right now, I can keep going and keep going and keep going. And there's no points assessed. There's nothing taken away from me. Sure, it hurts the ego, right? Like you fail and it sucks. It really sucks. I will... wallow in self-pity for like an hour after I fail and then I'll lick my wounds and before the end of the day, before I go to bed that day, I have already scheduled my next attempt because I didn't want to give up. I really wanted it. Hey AJ. Yeah. Why did you want it? And the reason I'm asking is I'm right there with you with failing all these wonderful exams. I took switch twice, route four times, t-shoot three times, took t-shoot the day of the switchover, failed it. didn't get my MP and now I'm right behind you trying to do encore. So if when you talk to somebody like you or I who'd love to fail exams and you keep going, you know, I feel like, I mean, I was thinking of this the other day, like you have to have a why, you know what I mean? Cause you really need motivation to keep pushing through all that pain and you know, cause you, you work so hard to study and then you don't get it over and over again. So I guess, I mean, I know my why, but why do you push so hard and why do you keep trying and why do you, you know, why do you want your MP? So I would say that answer has changed over the course of time. When I initially set out to get my NP is because I wanted my NP. I wanted to move to the next level. I wanted to progress and just prove myself to have it. And now it's turned into this, I want this. I know I can do this. I know I'm capable of this. I know that I know what I'm talking about. I know that I can do this. And it just became so much more than... get my NP. Now you don't have it though. That's true. I don't have it yet. I'm just kidding. I'm one gigantic step closer than I was a couple days ago. But that's, and really though, that's because you failed route and t-shoot, right? You never actually passed route, or did you? Right. Okay, so that's why, right? So if Andy was in your shoes and he went out and took the Encore and passed it, he would be a full-blown NP, right? No. You would think so. I took too long. You had to pass all three exams of the last one in three years. However the timing worked out, it's been too long for one exam to count for the next. I screwed up the timing of it. It's confusing to me too, but no, I won't have my MP when I pass my encore. Yeah, this is tricky because back in the day you used to have to take... February back in the day Yeah, you said three. Yeah, and I was with you dude. I took the switch twice AJ passed on the first time I was not so lucky that thing smacked me around man that was it That was a tough one. Um route I found to be a lot easier But if you read on the internet you find all types of stuff all over the place, right? Like oh switch was hard and the route was easy and it's like, okay It's really just to each his own. I mean, honestly if you really want to get down on yourself go read some some people's experiences because I mean it's not going to be yours anyway so I really I don't know I don't know why we as humans do that to ourselves we're like oh let me just check the internet real quick it's like you know you hit your knee on the table and you're like let me go to WebMD they're like well that's cancer you know you for some reason we know what it's gonna say but for some stupid reason we just go in there anyway we're like maybe they'll be nice this time and I'll go in there and I'll find some encouragement guess what no you get smacked in the face you know And someone could hear your story and go, oh dude This dude took it ten times I ain't got time for that and what if they even like looked up to you too and they were like man I know AJ like he's a super smart cat and Like they knew you right because you just said it like you were just trying to validate within yourself You know, you know the stuff. Well, I agree, you know the stuff, right? But there's a million different reasons why you couldn't pass a test but people looking up to you going man This guy's smart as heck, you know, he helps us out. Um, you know, you got the study groups together and stuff But you took ten times I would be like, I don't have the money for 10 times. I know. I'm right there with you, man. If I had to pay for this out of pocket, I would probably be second guessing myself a whole lot more than I did. So what a great company. Hey, EJ. I passed. I paid for all mine. Just as an aside. Same. I did too. I have given Cisco systems so much of my money. I know, man. For these exams. We should get failure plaques, you know? You know like when you pass the juniper exams like you know I have like I have like the 4x You know what? Should have the just a big bronze like 5x failure like especially for the CCIE lab right guys go in there and sweat their brains out and they're like You know what I mean? That's like a you watch anybody that leaves like that does the videos and stuff of them leaving the CCIE lab and they just look Like a different person after like one day It's almost like a CCIE. I mean this is the this is the new This is the written, right? The encore that you just passed? Yeah. So, I mean, you're the first person I know that took and passed the encore. So, I got two quick questions. I mean, did it seem as hard as something you'd expect to be the written CCIE? And I guess the more pertinent question for maybe our audience is, CCNA used to be a prereq for NP. Now it's not. So, you know, do you think that you could just go in without an NA level base of knowledge? know, study and pass this exam, being that NA isn't a prereq anymore. Yeah. You know, what would you, what would you say to somebody who's like, well, I was going to start my NA, but now I don't need it. You know, it's not a prereq for MP. Maybe I just go for MP. You know, I would say that if you have a technical background, if you've been working in career for a little bit, I think that CCNP is a great starting point. However, if you haven't been in career for a while, I think that you would miss. maybe some of that foundational knowledge that you just wouldn't get, you know, going straight to the CCNP. But don't you think that's true too though? Like, okay. So if you've been in career for a long time, I would argue that like, let's say you have like a day to day job where you're actually in switches and routers all day, like looking at configs and stuff. Do you still get the level of, of knowledge, right? To take the MP. So let me just, this is just what I'm thinking in the back of my head right now, as an example. So how do I know HSRP timers? Right. You know? Yeah, I guess it's totally relevant to what you're actually doing. Yeah, unless you were doing all the great. If you're in routers and switches every day, it doesn't necessarily mean you're actually using the commands and familiarizing yourself with the protocols and stuff. Yeah, I'm not transferring stuff. If you don't do anything with EEM on your network, then you're not going to have any experience with it. Yeah, no TFTP. I'm not setting up SSH. It's already there. You know? Right. I think to answer your question, even though you didn't ask me Andy, was that I don't think you can do it. You can do it. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it because I like to say that I have, because I still write that I have the CCNA even though I have a CCNP. So I'm like, yep, I have a CCNA and a CCNP. I don't downgrade that just because I got a quote unquote better one. You know what I mean? Yeah. I agree with you 100%. I just, you know, I was curious to what AJ thought of that. I think the base of knowledge you get from the NA is, you know, invaluable. And I agree you'd be doing yourself, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by jumping over that. Really kind of gets on my nerves, too. Like I said, I mean, I guess we're gluttons for punishment, right? Because I sort of did it to myself, but I just get so annoyed when people are like, no, you don't need you don't need to get a CC. Let me just tell you something. You don't need to get or do anything. OK. except if you want to remain alive all you have to do is eat sleep and drink water that's really all you need to do okay Now that we've got that out of the way You don't need a college degree. You don't need a cc. You don't need any of that crap What you do need is a want to do something And to make yourself better That doesn't include any of those aforementioned things. Um, yeah, so It's a it's an interesting conversation but Where you're at now though AJ, since you failed it so many times was, you're now able to take it from home because of what we're going through. So what has changed? Like, is it easier? Is it better? Give us the full low down of the at home testing experience from a professional level exam. So, I mean, I gotta tell you. So I live in Northern Vermont, not too far outside of Burlington. Burlington is by far the most populated area in the state. And there is only one Pearson Vue Testing Center. And it's still like a half hour drive from me. And it's at a community college that has, I think they have students operate the test center, or maybe it's shared with like a financial aid office or something like that. Like it's not a dedicated Pearson Vue Testing Center like I've been through at some other places. So it's like a half and half. So the availability is not great. Like if I wanted to take an exam, I would have to schedule at least a month out. And if they didn't have the availability or, you know, in a few cases where I wanted to retake my route, you know, right after or soon after I had a failure, I had to schedule it two hours away on the other side of the state. Wow. Just because, you know, other test centers further away had better availability. So, you know, driving two hours before your exam is unnerving because you have all that time alone in your vehicle. and you're just going through your head like, do I know this, do I know this, do I know this, do I know this? And then on the flip side of that, a two hour drive home after a failure really sucks. Oh man, what a shame. Totally, yeah. And so now the at home test environment is so much more comfortable. Sure, there's a little bit of hoops you gotta jump through. You gotta take a bunch of pictures of your setup. Right before you take your exam, a picture of yourself, a picture from each side, in front and back of your desk. If there's anything in your environment that they think could mess with you cheating or something like that, they'll tell you to take care of it. I've had guys that I work with, the proctors tell them, throw a blanket or a towel over that TV, come up those monitors, move this out of the way, do whatever. Of course. I will never try to take a test in my office because there's just too much stuff. So what I do is I set up a desk, a spare desk that I have. in my youngest son's room. You know, it's just he's five years old now. He's he's got a bunch of toys and stuff all over there. So I just I clear a space, put the desk in and I take pictures of his room and I take the exam in there and it works out great. And so, you know, the experience itself is relaxing, right? Because I'm home. I don't have to go anywhere. I'm in an environment I'm already comfortable in. It's not some exam room. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I've been to some exam centers where. I walk in, the proctor brings me into the room and I go to sit down and halfway through my test, there was this poor girl, two seats away from me, taking I don't know what test and she starts bawling. Because she's having a really hard time with her test and I'm just sitting there trying to take my exam, like, oh man. I've been there, man. That exact same scenario, but on top of that, you didn't have to drive two hours, right? Nope. So when you do the Walk of Shame now, where do you go? Uh, you know, I, the last time, the last couple of times I failed, I just kind of walked out, you know, I was upset and you know, maybe I went for a walk around my neighborhood or something like that just to try to clear my head and kind of think about like, okay, what, what did I feel like stomp me on this thing? Like what, what do I think I missed? You know, it's not, it's not nearly the, the horrible two hour drive home after just having failed an exam. Yeah. It's a completely different experience. Yeah. So it's more comfortable on both ends. Win or lose, right? Right. Yeah. Well, you got to celebrate. So let us know what you did. Well, it was the middle of the workday. I wanted to go straight to the fridge and grab a beer. But that wasn't an option. I had a meeting after. OK. So in case your employer is listening, he did come back to work after winning the lottery. I did. Yeah. I made some phone calls. I wrote some emails. I posted a few tweets and then I went right back to work. Yeah, you did that. That's like the story in itself, right? Like, yeah, look at this, look what I just did. And we're back. Punch back in, dude. Celebration's over, right? Let's get down to business. Exactly. And this is cool because you've now had the opportunity, you don't have to drive anymore, the testing is a little bit more flexible, and that's a result of all this stuff. Because what's interesting, I think is that the tests changed like certpocalypse, we're all calling it right as this hit. Like I mean, it was almost like two or three weeks of separation before we couldn't go anywhere anymore. You know, Cisco live got canceled, all that stuff. And I've long been doing Juniper certs from home. In fact, I've actually done one in bed before, which is awesome, which is a funny story. Yeah. You're right, right? And that takes another extreme, you know, being comfortable at home, obviously, you know, laying in your bed with your laptop on your lap is 10th degree of that, I would say. But, you know, other than like us being able to like take tests from home, which I think is like a, a good outcome of this, and hopefully they'll see that and think like, look, how many more people we got to register because we opened it up and we kind of laxed our rules a little bit. And then they can go, all right, we were making more money. Now they have data, right? Before it was just kind of an idea. So now they have data and they can say, all right, look how much we would actually potentially be making if we let people test from home. Who knows, maybe it starts with a hybrid model. The other thing that I'll add is that there seems to be a lot more flexibility in the scheduling right now. I mean, I could sign up for an exam and take it at one o'clock in the morning, 10 o'clock at night, whatever the case may be. Like today. Totally. Yeah. But last week, I was feeling super confident and wanted to take it a day earlier than I had originally scheduled it. I originally scheduled my exam for last Friday, and on Tuesday or Wednesday, I was feeling like, all right, I'm feeling good. I don't want to wait any longer. Let's just do this thing. On Wednesday, I was able to rebook my exam for Thursday, a whole day earlier. I don't think that I would have been able to do that at a test center. The testing from home gave me the flexibility to pull it in. That's crazy. The underlying story to that is actually better, which is that after 10 failures, you're still like, I'm feeling so confident. You pull it up a day. Who are you? I don't know, man. I don't know. God, teach us, man. Well, you've studied a lot, right? I mean, you busted your butt. You were prepared. You know what I mean? I mean, that's where I feel... I rarely feel confident for a CSC exam, but the few times I have, I... I studied really hard for a really long time. Did you work pretty hard, AJ, to get prepared? Yeah, and I wouldn't say that I worked any harder or any differently than I have in the past. I mean, maybe I did a few things differently study-wise. There was some videos that I watched this time. There was some stuff I did in the lab. And for some reason, this time, a few things, as many times as I've read it, as many times as I've done it, there was a few things that just finally clicked. It was like, oh. Okay, you know, and so I got some of that stuff locked in. I just had a better understanding of it than I ever have before. I had a guy at work, his name's Danny. He really helped me out with a lot of concepts that I was struggling with, and just to have him kind of walk me through, and just the analogies that he used, it really helped sink stuff in for me. You know, I was trying to read it in the book, I was trying to watch it in a video, and of course those are all very technical and stuff like that, and he was just able to use a really silly analogy that was just like, oh, okay, that's how that works. And now I can't forget it because he, just the way that he explained it to me. Sometimes you just need that last little piece, right? Like it needs to click. Cause I was gonna ask the same thing, well, something along those lines, which is like, all right, so you failed it 10 times. What did you identify as the gap there? Do you think it was like the way you were studying or maybe it was just, you were taking the test and there were like a couple of things that you didn't fully get, just like. you know, self-admittedly, when you look back on it, right? Was that kinda how it was? You know, I definitely think that it was a little bit of everything. Like, the way that I studied for my CCNA, my CCDA, and Switch was the same approach I initially took to go after the route and the T-shoe, and I don't think that was working. I used to sit there and read a book and highlight stuff, watch a video. I would handwrite notes. I would like. I would fill notebooks for handwriting stuff over and over again. Obviously, that didn't work. I didn't do some of those things and I'm trying not to do a lot of those things this time around. I just want to read it and ponder and try to apply it, and link it to real-world experiences and stuff that, if I can link it to something in my job, that'll help me remember it better. The other thing that I identified, was the speed at which I progressed through the exam. I fly through these things. It's like I put myself in an uncomfortable situation and I just want to get out of it. And so I'm going through the test and I start reading the question. And I think what happens is I feel like I've read enough and I go straight to an answer. It's the gut feeling, like, OK, yeah, this is it. And I move on to the next one. Because as I was going back through and reviewing stuff, from this past fail, there was a lot of things where just like, I know this, I know this. Okay, I need some clearing up on this, but there was more stuff that I was just like, I know this, why am I not getting this right? And I was taking a practice exam once and I got a question wrong, and I was like, what do you mean that's wrong? And then I go back and I reread the question. I'm like, oh, I didn't fully read the question. Yeah, what a bummer. Yeah, and so this time around, yesterday, when I took the exam, I read the question, I read it again, I read the answers as I was reading the answers. If I saw one that I liked, I'd click it, but then I would finish reading the other answers too. Okay, interesting. I have done some of this stuff in the past, but I definitely know that there were times where I was just maybe overconfident, thought I knew what the answer was, and just kept on trucking. And so this time I really took my time. I defended my thesis as I like to say. After I selected my answer, I went back and I read the question and I kind of just worked through my head Why is this my answer explain why are these answers the wrong answer? You know just even to myself hmm And once I was confident that I had the right answer on to the next see a different approach Obviously is what you needed and this is me and I'm speaking directly for you or well to you as It relates to being able to work from home because at this point you can't say that will not work from home Take the test from home But at this point, you can't say that didn't help either way, right? Because you'll never know. You know, you very true, right? The control is out the window. But I am going to attribute a lot of it to that personally, because I think, I think getting in your head for two hours on the way to a test center and a lot of people are going to be like that, right? But take advantage of this while you can. There's a lot of crap. So Andy, for instance, he's always been remote. Right, Andy? For about a year. Yeah. So at your current role, right? Yeah. You've always been remote. So this is something that you're used to anyway. So especially for a guy like you, it's like, hey, you're going to work, right? You sit in the same place you go to work, like right where you're at right now, you know, probably where you do a lot of studying as well. So it's very comfortable in that regard. But for guys like AJ and I, I'm remote too, but guys like AJ, like. you were going to an office all the time too, right? So, well, you're going to customer places, right? Like you were going to- Right, but I mean, I've been working out of my house for the last year. Okay, so yeah, you're in that boat too. Yeah. So there's a little bit of it too. Like if you were, you had to go out for the day because you had to work somewhere, like at onsite, doing a deployment or whatever. There was a lot of onsite for sure. Yeah, and then you're like spending two hours trying to drive to a place. I mean, that's just a lot involved, right? But story is it can be done clearly because we have living proof right here. So congratulations for that. Um, congrats, man. Yeah. The good news is now you get to study more. So something new, something different. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Don't let the wind get out of your sails yet. You know, use that momentum, propel your forward. So keep going, keep going. Um, so since we've all been remote, then, you know, haven't really been. quote unquote impacted, you know, personally, personally in our work lives so much. I mean, AJ, what sort of things have you felt on your end? Like what's been different? I wouldn't say that nothing changed. Initially, when we got to stay at home order, I was working on a bunch of different projects. And those IT teams that I was working with obviously became overwhelmed with requests to move people to. working remotely and they had to put the projects on hold. And so I went from having a full book of projects that I was working on down to just one project. And I figured it was like any day now for that one to get canceled too, because it wasn't necessarily something that was considered essential, I think, at the time. It wasn't related to like what's happening now. It was like, yeah, okay. Right, exactly. And so in my head, I was just like. this is it, like it's going to happen. Like, you know, the company can't afford to pay a bunch of engineers for a long period of time without, you know, having work come in with it, without having stuff for us to do. And so there, there was like that first week, I honestly thought I was going to lose my job. Wow. But, uh, you know, again, it was, it was me in my own head, uh, you know, kind of freaking out about everything going on. Um, cause the very next week, uh, we had people coming to us asking for our help to help get them. remote work environment set up so they can support working remotely for all of their employees and so since that time I mean I've worked on more projects at any given time than I've ever had as long as I've worked here So I've been super busy. Has that happened to you too, Andy? We're like because I you've been remote but you run You're on the show over there, dude. So what? has any of your workforce gone to a non-chord quote-unquote non-traditional model of working from home Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the percentage was pre-COVID, but it's a rather large company and everyone's been... There was one day they made a decision and everybody was remote. My job didn't really change from a personal level. The WAN's already there, it's stable. We didn't have to upgrade circuits or anything like that. I know that we had people... spinning up some cloud capacity for the entire company going home one day. But work hasn't really changed for me all that much, other than change management gets touchy because the global markets are a little shaky as a result of all this. And I work in financial services, so we don't- That's a whole other angle that I didn't even think about. We can't do anything to the network to contribute to some kind of global outage where it impacts the market. So, change management gets real touchy, only stuff that has to go in kind of thing. There's much more stringent eyes on things. For me, the biggest challenge was just balancing the work-life balance, the home balance. Pre-COVID, I have two kids under five. and they were both at daycare from eight in the morning till five at night, which allowed my wife and I to dedicate all day to our jobs. That's crazy. For a little over four months now, I have two spirited little nutball kids. Spirited. Yeah. Here all the time. And as you know, we're knowledge workers. Our jobs require extended hours or extended periods of concentration, and that becomes really difficult. if you're interrupted every 10 or 15 minutes, because somebody needs something from you. So that's been my biggest challenge, is just trying to figure out how to be as efficient at my job, while at the same time, basically running a daycare at my house. And I'm not alone, there's a lot of people out there doing the same thing. So, well, right, yeah. So it's not boohoo me as much, it's just that's been the biggest change in my life, amongst all the other stuff. So Andy, does your wife also work from home? She does and she's worked from home for a really long time. She works for a software company. But we had it worked out really well, different areas of the house. It was working out really nice pre-COVID. See, that's interesting to hear, dude, because you guys are in a very, I'll call it unique, where you guys were already doing it and you're like, come on guys, everybody's remote. It's all good. We've been doing this for a minute. We have it down pat. But the one thing you didn't think about was that now the kids are going to have to be home, right? During the week. Yeah. I mean, we paid as much as, you know, a mortgage payment, you know, for the ability to be able to, you know, work from home uninterrupted. And that just hasn't been since March, whatever it was when Pennsylvania shut down, you know, all the schools and daycare. So yeah, that's. You know, we tried to throw money at the problem. I put a put a pulling out back about a Nintendo switch. We you know, I got a projector with a hundred inch screen down in the basement. I tried to come up with all these. Yeah. You know, what are we going to do with these kids all summer? And but that didn't solve all the problems because they still need, you know, people get boo boo's, they get hungry, they need help with things. So that's been tough. I mean, basically I'm working. My wife and I are working. many nights during the week because I don't have eight hours a day uninterrupted during my eight to five to do my job. So I'm on the calls. I have to be on and I do what work I can during the day. But when we get off tonight, I have 200 routes I got to go through and do some research on them for something I'm working on. So I can't do that type of work uninterrupted. If I need three uninterrupted hours... It's really tough. And my wife's been great at like, okay, I got the kids, but you know, she's got a career, she's got calls when we're both on calls and the kids are running around the house, you know, like wild monkeys. Um, you know, it's definitely an interesting. It's strange times. We're trying to make the most of it. It's great to have everybody home, but there's a stress that wasn't there before for sure. You think everybody in the kind of understands it though, you know, when they hear kids going bananas in the background. Yeah. I mean. This is what it is, right? I mean, everybody's kind of in the same boat here, right? I mean, like, this is where I sit. You guys could see me right now. This is a podcast. You cannot see the video, but we can see each other. So trying to make you jealous here. You're not really missing much, but you can't see behind me is that I'm basically in a bedroom and there's a closet. Like, I mean, you can see all my shoes and this is like a. In my bed and, you know, I mean, I sleep there. Right. And now every meeting I get on, it's like, you can see where I sleep. I might've bumped into you. How much more intimate have meetings become now? That's ridiculous. Right. I just did a Cisco champions podcast, right. Cause I've done a couple of those guys too. And we were talking about work from home stuff and we had one of the executives from the Webex team there and some interesting conversations there came up because Obviously, a person like that has a lot of visibility in what people are doing from a remote work standpoint. But now even she's working from home, which you would have thought maybe, I don't know. But look at this, man. Things like WebEx. You guys know how long WebEx has been around? Forever. Yeah, it's the 90s. I'll tell you that. Yeah. And I looked it up, and I don't remember if it was 94 or 97, but early, right? So in the 90s, somebody had come up with this already. And yet the world has a collapse for us to start utilizing tools like this. Like other companies that are struggling, like we're all good because we're in technical, like I sell WANs, right? So if you want to talk about distributed enterprise, like we better have that figured out, right? Like we better be able to adapt to that on the fly as a company, like this is a little ridiculous. You guys kind of the same boat, right? Other folks, however, who are not used to it and are also not necessarily even in a tech realm, like, gosh, even look at like doctors and stuff that are having to start using what like those they've made have never been on a WebEx in their entire life. That's nuts to me, because I really don't think it's that difficult to figure out. But you know, you got people joining screens black, they don't know what they're doing, you know, they don't know how to mute themselves, right? Like they They just don't get it. Like there's a whole other etiquette part of this that often gets overlooked as well. But it's interesting to think about how like these tools and stuff have been around and then all of a sudden, for some reason, everybody jumps on Zoom, like it's the next coming of whatever. I mean, come on, dude, like AJ and I were talking about Back to the Future earlier. Remember on Back to the Future 2, they were doing the video call with needles. Yeah, and a video call and it was on Andy's 100 inch projection screen. 2015. 2015, that was crazy. He had two ties on. But that was like, that was what they predicted. It's so funny because I remember phones like at one point had like little like screens on them, right? And they were like, you can do video conferencing. We're like, wow, that's going to be so rad, but like weird, right? And like, you know, it'd be on your desk, but. Now, you know, you just pick up the cell phone and we're like, yeah, let's FaceTime whoever we want, right? I mean, but we don't really when it comes to work still. Like these tools have been here forever. Well, for some strange reason, it's like, oh, gosh, everybody has to work from home. What are we going to do? Gosh, if we only had 10 different options of tools to use. We only had the technology. What? That thought occurred to me. I mean, what if it was 1920 something and this was happening? Oh, so like it did happen, right? Like, what was that? Well, yeah, yeah. Spanish or whatever? Like what would... I feel very fortunate. I mean, it's an awful thing that's happening, but it's, thank goodness, in the history of humans, right now, like you said, we have all this technology at our disposal. We can see each other. We can... A lot of us can still do our jobs. People who can't work remotely. It's kind of amazing to see all the tools that, to your point, been around since the 90s, nobody really utilized them. And now they're kind of the backbone of running. running business and meetings and collaboration and stuff. It's pretty amazing. I mean, do you think this has forced a necessary change? Absolutely. In what way? I think a lot of this was really long overdue. So in the middle of the pandemic, I had like a thing come up with like health-wise, right? Like not a big deal. And I had to call my doctor. And we went back and forth by email. I have like a little health app. And finally, he's just like, take a picture and send it over. And it's just like, you know, this is so much easier to do that pre-pandemic, I would have had to like, try to schedule an appointment, which is always an ordeal, like, you know, for something stupid, right? Something stupid. Something slightly concerning, like, you know. And so it's like, why does it take a pandemic? And I get it. There's lots of regulation around healthcare and technology and stuff like that. Yeah, for sure. That happens because it's a lot of people that don't understand the technology enough to know how to properly regulate it. And so those people just got to play catch up and this is the kind of thing that forces them to do that. And I think it's about time. And to see the digital transformation that's happened the past four or five months, it's long overdue. I would agree. And I hope it sticks. I hope it sticks and- Me too. That it doesn't just sadly go away when we're all back at work or whatever. You know what I think will motivate companies is the amount of money they'll see saved by not maintaining all that brick and mortar and electric and HVAC and plumbing. I don't know if it was like $12,000 a year per employee is a number they threw out there on what it costs just to have somebody show up at a building. Interesting. So if you're renting all those buildings, people who own a bunch of real estate, it kind of stinks to be you, I guess, because you have all these empty buildings. But if you're... If you're paying millions of dollars a year to rent brick and mortar to force your employees in there to do something that they've been doing at home for four months now, everybody's looking to help their bottom line, right? Companies. So if you can trim millions off the budget by letting people work from home. And I think there's a level of trust there, right? Like, are people going to be working? I mean, I know people that sandbag. I've worked with them if you're not watching them. So I guess it's a, I don't know if it's like a management or a corporate philosophy or, some people need to be babysat, some don't. I personally think you shouldn't hire the people who need to be babysat. And if you've hired those people, do something about it. But don't punish the entire workforce and make everybody come in because you can't figure out how to hire adults. You know what I mean? Well, that's a whole nother piece of it too. It's like... Yeah, there's a trust factor there with our people going to do their job. It, it, it almost like makes you question other things too. It's like, okay, so who came up with eight to five or nine to five and who said like, okay, let's have a lunch at noon, right? Like why is that a thing? And so I think we're learning that it doesn't have to be like, why, like, why is that so like you, Andy, like as soon as we're done, you're going to go look through a hundred different routes. So try to find something, make sure everything's there. I mean, that wouldn't happen before because you drive back to the office, you're not gonna do that crap. Why would you put yourself through that? This is, it's just a strange domino effect that's happening when if you look at this, you guys are gonna love this, especially AJ because he just talked about analogies. People are still hesitant, businesses are still hesitant. to move to the cloud, right? And I'll use, this is an analogy and I'm going somewhere with this because Andy, you just brought this up. How much time, money, if you had to monetize this in AC costs, equipment, CapEx and OpEx into running your own server or rack or data center? At some point folks were like, oh. it is cheaper. Oh, it is more efficient. Oh, it's, it is more fault tolerant. Do you think that's going to happen to people? Because what you decide is, yeah, people are realizing that there's a cost. It costs $12,000 to, okay. So let's put that into the cloud analogy. It costs 12,000 bucks to, to just have a single two rack unit server with two power supplies. That's how much it costs me a year. 12 grand. in AC costs, in security and all that stuff, right? Licensing, hardware, whatever. Cost me 12 grand. Then somebody says, all right, well guess what, we're moving to AWS because I don't need that. How is this not the same? Yeah, you're right. I think it is, and I think it comes down to trust. Like you're a WAN guy, right? Think about, I don't know if it was 15, 20 years ago, the thought of sending all of your... you know, back in the day it was all dedicated circuits because telco couldn't see what you were doing. And then they came out with MPLS and... Because they ran out of bandwidth. Yeah. Well, right. But there was also a trust issue of like, do I trust my telco enough to send all my information across that, you know, it's not a private leased line and what if, you know, they're going to be reading my stuff and all that. So there was a trust factor. But I think, to your point, and that's where I'm going with it, is there was such a cost savings. to going to MPLS as opposed to a dedicated circuit that the company said, well, we can save all this money. Let's try it. Let's trust these telco, you know, silver tongue devils and see if they, you know, infiltrate our data and ruin us. Well, you didn't and they saved money and there was all these benefits of MPLS. So it might be the same. So to your point, cloud, it's another trust model. Well, are we just gonna put our critical infrastructure in some... building we don't know, with people we don't know. Where is it even? Where is it? What's going on? How do we know? We're getting the redundancy they set. Whatever the case may be, but AWS is successful. They prove themselves. And now there's a trust where, of course, you got to go in the cloud. It's crazy not to. So maybe with people working from home, I mean, yeah, if a company sees how much money they can save in the operating expenses of running buildings to make people come in, do they trust their people enough? to let them work from home and maybe it'll take some time like it did with Telco and with cloud. But magic crystal ball prediction. I mean, I can't imagine that the world isn't gonna change after this and there's gonna be a heck of a lot more people working from home and companies are gonna have to trust their people as an experiment maybe and see what happens. I mean, right now their hand is forced. They have to, right. Their governments are saying, you don't send people in, you're in trouble, but. Yeah. if and when this thing calms down, get a handle of it, whatever the case may be, vaccine, however it goes, are they just going to say, all right, everybody back in now because we said so? Or is there going to be some establishment of trust? Like, all right, we've been really successful doing this and there's benefits for you guys not having to like AJ drive two hours to an exam center. I used to commute three hours a day for years going into the city for my job. So getting three hours a day of my life back. You know, you want to make your employees happy and it doesn't cost you a dime. You're actually going to save money, Mr. Company, by leaving me at home, you know, and then Mr. Company is not as reasonable as you think. So although your tone is very, very easy and it's not off putting whatsoever. And it's making me feel very at ease like I would buy from you. I don't think Mr. Company is as forgiving as you may think he is. But they want to save money. That's the tipping point, huh? That's it. Money? Companies? Bottom line? Why do people get laid off? Wait, hold on. Because they need to make their books look better. So, I mean, after you move yourself to the cloud, okay. Yeah, you do know where it is, right? I mean, now it's kind of making a joke. I mean like AWS will tell you, hey, you're here, right? So even if there's an earthquake on the inside of the world or something and When it started did you know where it all was? Okay, so when Bezos was in that little desk in that corner of his house Yeah, when it started, I mean, you know, I like trusting this dude now. Yeah, why would I put myself in the cloud? So so the whole point is They could have had your data in Malaysia Do you care? I mean, because and there's depends on what the data is, I guess. Well, there's a reason why I'm asking this. So if it's secured, right? Do you, other than like, let's say you had some sort of like latency requirements or something, do you care where it is? Other than just being a nosy human? I don't care where it is. As long as it's safe. And I'm encrypting everything, so you can't see it anyway. Yeah, so perfect. I mean, you know, maybe. So good answer. So. The reason why I'm saying that is because now I live in Southern California. You guys live in the East coast. Does it matter where I live? Not anymore. No. Right. I mean, it's helpful if you're in the same time zone, right? But if, if you've just realized that you could push people out to the cloud, cloud workforce, God, we should like, should we turn that into like a hashtag or something like that? Almost like we're marketing over here and didn't even realize it. There's a couple of good things coming up. I like failure plaques. That was the earlier... Failure plaques. I want a failure plaque for sure. It's gonna look like a Gene Simmons wall of gold records back there. Yeah. But pushing people to the cloud. I don't think it matters anymore, Aaron. You know what I mean? The world's become smaller. Everything's been digitally transformed. We're all well of high speed Internet. I mean, it really... Time zones, I think, would be the only constraint to your point. But other than that, I mean, look at the three of us now. We're 3000 miles apart collaborating on a project and getting it done. And how would we have done that prior to high speed Internet and all these digital tools that we use? So I think the challenge now is going to be to coaxing people back into the office if a business wants to keep that model. I think that they're gonna have to really incentivize people and not just financially. Like I think they're gonna need to give them the tools. They're gonna need the fancy projection systems and those kind of tools. To expect me to just go back into an office with my laptop, which is what I had at home, like I'm gonna need some tools. I'm gonna need monitors. A reason. A reason. Why is it easier? Why can I get more done here than I could back at my house? Make me wanna come into the office. Yeah. The reason I've heard multiple companies use, at least pre-pandemic, is collaboration. People work better in it. I heard it a previous... I'm not advocating it. You're getting the card up, Andy. No, but this is what they say, right? But then guys like us who need to be left to hell alone so we can concentrate and work on hard stuff are in a collaborative environment. No cubes, no walls. People are shooting Nerf guns, listening to the radio. playing ping pong and I'm like this is not a work environment. I used to be that guy. I used to shoot every guy. And it's all good but you know certain jobs like if you're the sales guy no knock on sales guys but have a party rock on you're not in front of a client right now you know have a blast who cares but you know you got a guy who's trying to you know build something or figure something out or you know our jobs are difficult can be difficult at times. I agree with you. You need to be able to concentrate and you know a collaborative environment and open... Don't get me started on open office plans. I mean, it's not- Hey, that's debunked though. We're good there because we've since- I can't stand them. I can't work in an open office plan. You're not alone, dude. And I think that's such a, it was almost like a buzzword. It was like, hey, look, check this out. I'm in Silicon Valley. Like, let's just be for real. The reason why that happened is because people would buy a space because it's all they could afford and it was just one big room, kind of like my place is here, right? Gosh, if I had walls in here, it'd be the same exact experience to me. It's just, guess what? It didn't come with walls. So I'm not gonna take the time, We actually did that on purpose, because we want you guys to collaborate. Yeah, okay, I'm real freaking slick, let me tell you. But I've seen a bunch of articles and stuff on LinkedIn. You know how these things float around all over the place. You guys see the same ones I do. It's like how we found out that it's actually not as collaborative as we thought, because. There's an element that like makes you like reel back in. It's like, well, now I need some privacy. Where do I go? And then you find yourself going, gosh, this feels great. Let me just stay here. Right. Like they even had these like little phone booths and stuff like that you could go sit in. Like, what are you supposed to do if you're someone who interacts with like customers or like, you know, you're having meetings and stuff and on the phone and it's all remote. Like you cannot sit in that environment. I mean, I've tried. Whether you can concentrate or not is even a whole other story of whether or not the person on the other side can concentrate or not Anytime you unmute it sounds like a freaking party is going on your side of the phone, right? You know, it's kind of like a thing with the kids, right? So it's You know, yeah, never mind that whole open. Sorry about that and that whole open concept plan like that That'll throw me through the roof man. I still think it's ridiculous, but It depends on the job, right? Sure, if you're like marketing or something. But I even think, like, so, you know, our jobs, no, it doesn't matter where we are and, you know, working from home, we can be just as, you know, productive. So like if you're in a band, right? I mean, you're not going to record an album if you're not in the same room. You probably could, but I want to feel the drums in the room. You know what I mean? There's just... In certain jobs, there's a definite collaborative thing that you should be in the room. To AJ's point earlier, I'd prefer to go to a doctor if I have a real problem. Interesting. Because I know he can get his hands on me. Oh boy, okay, that's enough. Well, no, but you know, the physical exam, so I have this lingering swimmers ear thing I've had for like three weeks now. I would have preferred to go into the doctor's office, have an otoscope on my ear, and he can tell, did I rip my ear drum? Did I not? What's going on? Is there a bug living in there? But I didn't, but I didn't, cause I'm like, well, I'm not gonna go in if I don't have to, things aren't safe. So, yeah, we did the Skype thing. He tried to look in my ear on my camera. I don't know if I got the same kind of examination. That's fair. Over the, but. I think in general, at least for network engineers, that's the podcast that we're doing. It's ridiculous to make people like us drive two hours into a place and be distracted the entire time we're at this wonderful open office environment because the company says, studies show that people are more productive and collaborative when they're together in the same room. Well, not network engineers, not knowledge workers, maybe the sales and marketing people, but you got to give us some... some quiet space to concentrate. I don't know. I'm off my soap box. Sorry. No, that's good feedback because I don't agree or disagree with the office personally. I do know that there's like the fear, right? That most employers had that was like, well, if I let you go home, then I don't know what you're going to be doing. Well, if I'm in the office, you know what I'm doing. If you see all these people that just keep walking up to me and talking to me for no reason It's much more distracting than anything that I could be doing at home So there's a difference between paying somebody to work between I was kind of getting at this a little earlier paying someone to work eight hours or Paying them to do a job Right is the job getting done. I guess let me ask you so you have a hundred routes to look at you're gonna find out Where they're going? hmm your going to complete that task. That task was something that you needed to do as part of a bigger project, I'm assuming. And once it's done, you can check it off the list and say, this is what I did. Does it matter to anyone if you took 45 minutes or four to five hours to do that? It just has to get done. Just has to get done. And that's the reality of it, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter where I'm sitting or how long it took or it. It just has to get done. And I think. I mean, you got to keep your people busy. Like, so if you're a company, you have a workload, you hire people to do that stuff. As long as the work is getting done, why would you have to micromanage them? Well, I'm so busy, I can't- So busy and productive are two completely different things. Right? So, but here's why I'm like, you know, you're on the soapbox for a second, now I'm right on top of that sucker too. Paying for someone to do a job is so much different because- It shouldn't matter how long they do it in or whatever. So like, let me give you an example. If I'm not salaried and I'm like a contract worker, I say, based on this task, it should take me X amount of hours and therefore I will charge like this, right? Whether or not I get it done in half that time, it doesn't make any difference. That's a bonus I get for being good at what I'm doing, right? And then I'm able to do other things. The issue becomes, like you were saying, like keep them busy, like. Are you just going to give me remedial tasks because I'm so efficient in my job and now clog me up with other stuff? Just because I'm so good at it almost seems like punishment, right? Like oh, hey, you're fast at this now Now since you're not doing anything, why don't you do it? It is now. Wait a minute If I would have known because you mentioned the guy earlier the sandbagging guy, you know I know a couple guys in sandbag, but it's like Then why wouldn't I? right because in that Analogy like I'm the one that's getting hurt for all that. Yeah, I mean people are who they are, right? You're gonna have the people who hide and then you're gonna have the people who work, you know every boat Eventually if it was destined for the bottom of the sea will sink You know, it's gonna come out, you know the people that are sandbagging it'll be 100% But you know, it's all about culture to you know, like if there's a culture of accountability You know if you get the work done in five minutes instead of five hours You still have a product that you can turn in If you choose to turn it in at the end of five minutes as soon as it's done, that's your choice. If you sit on it for five hours, doesn't matter, you can still turn in your boss and your boss sees that you've got something done. Whereas the people that sandbag, if they're not being held accountable, if no one's checking to see that they're doing the work, or if they are and they don't care that the work's not getting done, that's a completely different story. I'd like to say if I was running a team, if I was in management, and I have things I gotta get done. As long as my people that are reporting to me are getting it done on time. That's all you need. If you get it done quick and you get an extra hour and you wanna go do something, you know. Do it, do it, man. Just get the work done. Yeah, we're not factory workers here, you know? But forcing people to go somewhere so you can stare at them and make sure that. Yeah, right, right. And as much as I like staring at you guys, I believe we have done our work for an hour here, so we'll all collect our paychecks, We do want to thank everybody for tuning in and listening. We are supposed to be talking about the impacts of COVID, but you know, we drift a little bit here and there and went into a little CCNP and test experience, La Land, which is, which is cool because it's all relevant. I feel like, um, and if you want, uh, check us out on all of the. Downloadable venues in which you find your favorite podcasts, but you can also find us three, uh, three of your favorite Cisco champions, wink, wink. Hashtags Cisco champions. Just realized that like we're all that's pretty cool Maybe we'll get some more of those guys on here, but find us on Twitter. We're all there We have a discord channel so if you guys want to study like AJ and now AJ can bring to you guys all of his worldly experience from All the testing that he's done, which is super invaluable Thanks for hanging out with us. See ya later Hey everyone, this is AJ. If you like what you heard today, then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher. Smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes. Also, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. We are at art of net eng. That's art of NETENG. 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.