00:00
This is the art of network engineering,  where technology meets the human side of IT.  Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems, or shaping your career, you've got the insights, stories, and tips to keep you ahead in the ever evolving world of networking.  Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. My name is Andy Lapta,  and the following was recorded live at a USNU event, dubbed  Career Day. The place was packed, standing room only. Engineers at every stage of their career, some trying to break in, others trying to figure out their next move.

00:29
And plenty have been in the game long enough and are still asking,  what's next? What are people getting paid? How do you move up or move on? When does loyalty help you? And when does it hold you back? And how much does your professional network matter? The USNUA is built on a simple idea, bring network engineers together to discuss the latest, the most relevant topics in networking in a vendor agnostic and sales-free environment. Oh, and free food and free beer. So huge thanks to Jason Ginter and everyone involved in making these events happen. This is what building a real community looks like.

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We've recorded this event and are sharing it here on the Art of Network Engineering podcast, because these conversations can make a big difference in your career. And the entire USNUA community should benefit from talks like this, held at local NUGs. We hope to bring you more content from regional NUGs as time and budget permit. So if you're thinking about your career, where you are, where you might be stuck, or where you want to go next, this episode is for you. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the PA Network User Group 2026 Spring.

01:27
Career Day brought to you by USNUA and the Art of Network Engineering podcast. We want to thank everybody for taking the time to come out. For those who don't know, my name is Dwight, myself, as well as  Eric, Craig, Andy, Drew, multiple other people. We kind of put this thing together on a volunteer basis through the USNUA, really for what we're seeing right here.  It's an opportunity to bring the community together, have an opportunity to talk about networking. Today, we're kind of dubbing this the Career Day.

01:53
because the topics that we're going to hear from and the people we're going to hear from are thought leaders in the industry and people that are really talking about things that we're thinking about, right? What do salaries look like? How do we get promotions? How do we move in between industries, right? Starting from warehouse and getting the bar with stop at the Marines on the way. And I'm hoping I'm not overselling or underselling somebody's presentation that's coming up. Also wanted to mention, if you haven't gotten swag, go get stickers, go get Andy socks. They're great. With that being said, I am going to pass things over here to our first speaker. So we are going to have Drew.

02:22
Henry Murray opening up from Packet Pushers talking about the salary survey that they recently ran. Drew, if you want to come up on stage, I got a clicker. Everybody, thank you for coming out tonight. Recently, what's a Packet Pusher? work for an outfit called Packet Pushers. It's a tech media company. We produce podcasts for a technical audience. It was founded in 2010 by two CCIEs who just...

02:40
Started a podcast because I like talking about networking. Over time, they turned into a full-time business. We now have more than a dozen podcasts on networking security, IPv6, DevOps, professional development. We have a YouTube channel. We have a Slack community where folks are helping each other out with problems, talking about products, and do all kinds of stuff. It's all free, and we've built up a really good audience and a really good community. So come check it out if you haven't heard of us before. We reached out to our audience because we thought, hey, let's do a salary survey. Let's see what things look like. I wrote a report. It's entirely free. You can download it. You don't have to give us your email or anything.

03:08
acoportures.net slash salary survey if you want to check it out. I'm going to go over some highlights, but there's tons more information in the document. Some basics on the salary survey. We had 418 respondents from 33 countries around the world.  242 came from the US. The rest were overseas. As you can tell by the room, most of the respondents were male. That's an issue we need to work on as an industry, but that's a different talk. So it's a salary survey. So let's get into what you want to see. Starting at the basics, what's the average survey for?

03:34
the entire globe. started with base salary, 136,000 additional compensation. things like stocks, healthcare, bonuses, whatever. Total compensation globally, 163,832. Inside the U.S., 197,106 among the U.S. respondents versus 117,976. Just curious, does this U.S. seem strange? Too high, too low? What your seems very California. Seems very California? Yeah.

04:02
Do you have roles assigned? Is that networking genius? We pitch the salary generally as like for tech, but the majority of our respondents are in the networking field. So I would say, yeah, this is the average networking. I feel like it's a kind of a high number. It's a good number, but it's a high number. maybe we'll talk about how our results got to that number as we go in. But let's move on. Besides looking at average, we want to look at sort of among our respondents who had the lowest salary, who had the highest salary both in the US and outside the US. For US respondents, the lowest one was 30K. The highest one

04:30
was a guy, think, in the Seattle area who was a network architect for a very large organization you have heard of making almost a million dollars a year. Pretty nice. Outside the US, this 4K one, I think is the guy in Russia. So consider your salary and consider this and you're probably doing all right. And outside the US, the highest salary respondent reported $425,000. I think they were in Australia.

04:52
We look at the data in a lot of different ways. One of the ways is comparing U.S. cities. In our results, Seattle, Washington had the highest average salary at over 364,000. You can probably guess why, given the companies in that area. Out of the U.S. cities that we've figured had enough to report, Charlotte, North Carolina had the lowest at 130,000. There are lots of things that are gonna affect those regional salaries, like the companies in that area, kind of work that's being done and so on. One thing I'll note, Philly is not here. Why is Philly not here? There's a lot of people in this room. Hopefully the next time we do this survey, we get some more.

05:21
respondents because I would love to see Philly get on this and also get some more data about other cities. Here's experience. So the majority of our respondents are senior, which I think probably has something to do with that high average number I showed earlier. 84 % are seven or more years in the industry. As you can see, total compensation for seniors, 174,000 average. This is again global, U.S. and the rest of the world versus just under 70 for a junior. Keep in mind as we go through more of these results, the vast majority of our respondents are at a senior level, which is gonna influence the numbers that you're seeing.

05:51
Certifications, I think it's well known in the networking and the tech industry in general that certifications are a pathway to a higher salary, a more varied career. So we did ask about certs. Note that we only asked about certifications as categories. So we didn't break out like a Juniper cert versus a Cisco cert or a CCIE versus a CCNA. We kept them to specific buckets.

06:12
but we did break it out, so I'll dig into a little bit more specifics. For networking in particular, which I think would be of interest to this room, beginner certs, average salary globally, 142,000 experts get up to 175, again, globally, not just the US. And there's a 23 % increase between a beginner cert and an expert cert. I don't know if I'm confident to say there is a causal relationship between certifications and salary, but I feel like there is a strong correlation in the numbers that we got, and so let's.

06:38
Keep that in mind as we go. Yeah. Do you think the certifications also have anything to do with like time in the industry? So if I was starting out, probably going to get the beginner cert, whereas seven years in. Right. If you're in the industry for seven years or more, you're going to have more opportunity to do more certs, also advance through the certification system of whatever vendor you're doing. So yeah, of course that's going to have an impact. Some of the other certifications that I thought would be of interest in this room, wireless and automation, we're seeing

07:04
From Paca Push's a lot of interest in network automation in particular. I think it is a fast growing area if you are interested in advancing your networking career doing some interesting stuff Automation is an interesting space to be in and you can see among these three certs the difference between beginner and expert compensation a 31 % increase for the automation cert track versus networking and wireless Which is 23 and 0.75 this one the 0.75

07:32
That seems low to me on the wireless side. I think it's because we just didn't get a lot of wireless engineer respondents. It's mostly wired. Again, this is  based on the respondents we got. So yeah, your mileage may vary. But I do think, again, strong correlation for automation. If you are thinking about how do I want to advance my career or  opportunities for me to move into, I think automation might be a good one. Out of all the categories we looked at, the one that had the highest percentage increase between beginner and expert was cloud. 43 % increase between beginner certifications and expert. ah

08:00
So tools, again, we wanted to get a sense of like if you're investing your effort, your time, your career into a tool, what's the correlation with potential payoffs? I think the Network to Code folks will be happy to see that Notobot is doing pretty well. Wireshark 161, uh 452 average global total compensation. I felt like these numbers seemed a little slightly wonky to me. I think one of the things has to do with the number of respondents. So with more people doing Wireshark, that means you're gonna get like sort of.

08:27
more beginners, more intermediate search, which is probably going to bring down the total compensation number versus not a bot, which if you're using not a bot, you're probably doing automation. You're probably a little bit more advanced in what you're doing. That's going to lead to a higher salary. So take these numbers with a grain of salt. Again, I'm not trying to say there is a causal relationship that if you become an auto bot expert, you will get rich, but I do think as an indicator of where you might want to go on your career journey, these are some guideposts you could consider.  We'll be right back.

08:57
This episode of the Art of Network Engineering is sponsored by METER.  METER delivers network infrastructure for the enterprise because every organization deserves seamless connectivity.  Whether you have a large team of network engineers or an IT team of one,  METER makes it simple to get online and stay online.  METER provides a full stack integrated platform that combines hardware, software, deployment, and support.  So enterprises can ensure their networks have the performance, security, and reliability they need

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without the inefficiencies of juggling multiple vendors.  It's enterprise networking re-imagined, giving IT teams the ability to spend less time managing complexity  and more time driving business strategy.  Go to meter.com forward slash uh A1 to book a demo now. That's M-E-T-E-R.com forward slash A-O-N-E.  Now back to the show.

10:10
have an interest in certifying you, chances are they want to compensate you. That's a very good point. There's probably something about ease of entry too, because tools like Ansible and Wireshark are relatively easy to get into. InfraHub and Autobot are a little bit harder to really dig into. Again, Netbox, least these iterations of it were pretty easy to dig into. An InfraHub and Autobot and Netbox, you're not doing that on your own. That's part of a

10:38
broader automation strategy being done by the organization as opposed to Wireshark. Anybody can download and start using it. And also I'm not saying don't learn Wireshark. It's a great tool and a great skill set to have. But it's useful, right? Like Wireshark is more a troubleshooting diagnostic tool. Yes. Which is completely different from none of us and the rest, right? Exactly. It's unfair to work with them in the same category. Yeah, you're right. It is probably unfair. And Wireshark is kind of basic. Like if you're studying your CCNA, you probably have Wireshark.

11:06
installed in the UC Ukraine. I'm just saying that they're served completely different purposes. It's not fair to put them the same. Yeah,  I take that critique and maybe we can do something about that in a future  study as we get more granular. Drew, was the question on these specifically people that are certified,  taking certifications?  We did a tools question and then we did uh a list the tools that you're using in your job.

11:33
Some people might have Ansible and Wireshark and NottaBot or NetBox and Wireshark or others that I didn't include in here. So yeah, it was a mix. We also asked about education level. A plurality of our respondents have a bachelor's degree. Probably not a surprise. But how does that track with compensation? Bachelor's degree is the highest of all of these except for doctorate. Although I will say only one person in our survey had a doctorate, so we should just  throw that out.  But I just put it there as an aspirational thing maybe. You want to go get a PhD? Go for it.

12:03
I also thought it was interesting that bachelors is higher than folks with a master's degree. Not 100 % sure why that is, but my assumption is it has to do with if I am going to focus on my career in technology, there's probably a better payoff and more relevance if I'm focused on a Wireshark, an Autobot, uh vendor certs and so on to advance my career as opposed to getting an MBA or some other master's degree. Not to say if you think a master's degree is going to be helpful for you, go for it. uh Again, this is not a causal relationship, but...

12:33
strong correlation. The other thing I wanted to point out is I often hear, or I think the industry hears that you don't need a college degree to succeed in networking. And I think this bears that out. I feel like it's true again, because of that certification path, which can lead to job opportunities and advancements. Folks with the associates degree are doing just as well as people with a master's degree and almost as well as folks with a bachelor's degree. So if you don't have a bachelor's degree, it is absolutely not an impediment, I think, to a good successful career in this field. Questions, observations? Yeah. Do you plan to do this again?  Because we do. Yeah.

13:02
maybe include military experience because that's huge, the high school versus college. yeah. We didn't do that at all, but that's a great suggestion. Yeah, thank you. Okay, wrapping up, we wanted to know are people satisfied with whether they're being paid? So we asked them to rank it on a scale one to five, one not satisfied, five very satisfied. You can see that the majority are a four or a five. So why are we getting those numbers? I think it's also related to this. We asked, how would you rate your current salary below average, average above average, very above average?

13:32
The majority of our respondents think themselves either average or higher, which to my mind means if you think you are being paid at least as much or more than your colleagues, you're probably going to have a high degree of satisfaction with your salary. Again, if you want to see the whole survey has a ton more data and stuff, acco.pushers.net slash salary survey free. You don't have to give us any contact info, whatever. Just go get it and run with it.  Thanks very much.

13:57
There's a lot of people in this room that I got texts from. They're like, how do I do that? So just just so we're aware. So that was that was good to have just right off the bat. I'll pass things over to Pat and we'll take a quick break in between. Try to follow that by Drew. That's that's big shoes to fill. So this is kind of what this night is about. Try to tackle some of those harder things. So this basically just how do you ask for a raise or how does that come up?

14:18
What does that look like relationship between boss, whatever, just some structural things of, you know, keep it about data, facts, and try not to leave with the emotional side. That usually doesn't land very well. Right. So raises aren't automatic, right? We all hear about the two to 3 % and three to five somewhere in there, you know, kind of cost of living type of thing. Right. And the cost of living goes up and you only get a certain amount of raise. You're not even keeping up with that. Right. So a lot of guys, a lot of gals, I know they wait too long and then they miss their window.

14:46
for that raise, right? Again, keeping it about data, keeping the emotion out of it, right? know, bills are high, aren't necessarily a you know, a good standing ground, you know, why you want to raise. So again, just some general numbers and thanks to Drew for the actual numbers. This is PA only. So yeah, just keep that in mind. This is PA only, just rough general numbers as far as network engineers average, seniors obviously a little more.

15:11
and your mileage may vary, right? Drew touched on it earlier, the automation and the cloud stuff is really big in the network engineering space. Folks that have those specialties,  interests, whatever, those roles are growing faster than something just the general jack of all trades  network engineer. If you're looking for a space to kind of call home automation cloud, and then obviously the security is always hot, right? So  those are the big three that I would kind of.

15:35
gravitate towards if that's something you're interested in. some of the data here, right? 102 to 117. Again, that's PA only and that's just a general dart on a dartboard. Comes from Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter, late 2025, 2026 data somewhere in there. So take that for what you wish. And then people who generally ask obviously get more than people that who don't, right? That's pretty much common sense, right? So, and just a little graphic chart on the other side of that of some comparison points nationwide and PA. So I'll stop there. Any questions?

16:04
Yes, sir. Just for experience. I've been told by HR that I couldn't get more than 5 % a year because of rules and things. Fair enough. Not where I am now, but in another way. And that's going to vary by industry, right? So you can get 50 % more by asking. Well, there you go. I asked, I'm like, sorry, can't. And it will vary by the company. Yeah, it's going to vary. right. And your industries are different, right? Finance and banking is much different than retail or different than hospitality or different than wherever, right? So you kind of have to judge your, you know,

16:33
where you're calling home for those couple of years. Couple steps, right? You're building your case. And again, I said, keep it with like quantifiable action. Keep a humble brag sheet, right? Kind of thing. Update a quarterly. Be like, hey, you know, reduce downtime or let SD-WAN or, you know, use NottaBot to automate. Keep it in that space of it's hard to argue with backs and actual things that are quantifiable because it's all about the business. But the other day, this is don't make money. None of us are doing anything. Pat, these wins are...

17:00
Are you writing them for a technical person or a non-technical person? Most of the time it's for technical, right? So you, you roll up to somebody that's generally technical in this space, right? That kind of thing. But again, I would, I would keep it technical, but also apply that to the business. If your boss, by dumb luck, gave it to the CEO, he'd be able to understand this is what this does for my business. And you want to highlight some of your growth, right? Search.

17:25
We talked about newer responsibilities, you're mentoring a junior, you're taking on a quasi leadership role, given some management responsibilities, whatever, blah, blah, blah. That all goes down and that all is, it's hard to argue with some of that increased role. And I mentioned the humble brag sheet, review a quarterly or whatever on your timeframe, right? Monthly, just...

17:44
keep it updated so there's no dust on it when you pull it out and be like, hey, look at this. Yeah, that kind of thing. And again, focus on the business value, not just the effort, right? Because we all know SD-WAN is an effort. We all know automation is an effort, right? You got to apply it to that business value of, hey, we led to 30 % more downtime, your vulnerability patching or whatever. Yeah, that kind of thing. So keep it business focused, right? Step two is kind of knowing your market value, right? Pack the pushers, right? That's a great spot. There's a bunch of them out there, Glassdoor, Salary, whatever, local jobs, whatever. Craig's List, I don't even know.

18:13
No, they do that anymore. Again, just a couple more numbers there, just to reiterate the automation and the cloud stuff to Andy's point, aim realistically, right? Now to his point of you can't go more than five. If there's a cap on the dollar amount, then to Drew's point, if there's additional perks, right? Another week of vacation or whatever that may be. See if you can offset some of that with some other non-dollar amount things. Timing is a big thing in all of this. Obviously don't ask for a raise after you just, you know, fix the major outage, right?

18:41
Or if you were the cause of that outage, right? Probably not the best time,  right? Guilty, yes. Yeah, it's like that meme of  the office. It's like, fixing an outage at iCause. know, the guy is shaking his hand in the office. Timing is a big thing, right? After a big win, you migrated to  a new telephony platform, right?  With a vendor or whatever. A performance review, right?  Most of us get those yearly. Or, you know, some sort of budget planning, right? A lot of them happen in Q4, Q1, depending on when  the business cycle is. Those are...

19:09
the best times to ask just generally, cause that's where a lot of this conversation comes up. And if your manager is decent, it's already on their radar, right? That kind of thing. I always schedule a one-on-one, right? That kind of thing. Talking salaries in public places or even depending on how small your team is. I don't even like doing that. It's a one-to-one conversation with the boss, right? Schedule a meeting. And I normally like to give them a heads up that that's what the meeting is about. I try not to blindside them going into that. Like, Hey, you know, it's the last thing he wants to do is talk about compensation, but he doesn't know what's coming, right? That kind of thing. So, and again, a couple

19:39
things to avoid, uh Crisis, obviously, or layoffs, or just in the casual lunchroom  chat space. And then basically just having the conversation, right? I really enjoyed working here. Let's talk about the next level. What does that look like? Blah, blah, blah. And again, keep it facts. You're sharing facts, your achievements, your market data, all the things that we said before, just kind of balling those up and giving them to as one nice pretty package and whatever you're targeting, right? X amount of dollars or X amount of increase percentage-wise, that kind of thing. So the other thing I think that isn't...

20:09
quite talked about enough is asking for their feedback. Once you kind of drop the bomb on them,  let them respond. Give oh them space to rebuttal. They say, oh yeah, yeah, whatever, or I'd like to, or whatever that is. But let them have a space to tell you their thoughts and that gives you feedback to take back with you. And then again, just some general talking things. Practice it once or twice. Kind of help calm the nerves and stuttering and all those.

20:34
types of things. So you definitely want to rehearse that before you go in for the big performance type of thing. The decision tree here, you know, yes, if they say, yeah, that's great. Thank them. And you always want that next step in writing, right? Or confirm what you've talked about in writing. If no, then that's where the feedback comes in, right? If there's a hard number on the dollar amount of, can only give you X, Y, or Z, then look at, you know, is there a bonus? Is there additional training? Conference? Just go live or RSA. Things of that nature, right? That all costs money too, right? Counteroffers. I kind of kept this nice and short because we could probably talk.

21:03
counter offers, that's a whole other ball of wax. Could you meet kind of in the middle, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. And then basically just an email to follow up in a summary. So it's in writing somewhere and it just doesn't get lost into the void. Some do's and don'ts, right? Obviously kind of what I said before, leave with contributions, business impact, quantify your wins, schedule that dedicated meeting and give the heads up, follow up in writing. Don't focus on the personal needs of, yeah, bills are high.

21:26
everybody's as high. So take the emotion out of it as well. Like it's hard to argue with data and facts. Emotion kind of gets messy and gets in the way, that kind of thing. And then accepting the know without any feedback. You don't know what you have to work on if you don't have that feedback that your boss may think. Feedback is good and the more feedback the better. You much rather walk away with some feedback or too much feedback than none. And you sort of wrap up, right? So kind of nice and short. I think asking shows the value.

21:52
of the work and to the company. It shows an investment that you're again, happy to be here and you know, that sort of thing. And you want to see the company progress with whatever industry or average that you guys are in, right? So it shows initiative. It shows that it's on the top of mind,  obviously for outside of the obvious reasons, right? We all want to get paid. Worst case scenario, you get useful feedback. Like I said, you don't know where you stand unless somebody gives you that feedback. So you can never do too much with feedback. So I think skills are really in demand from a networking perspective, right? Automation, cloud, security.

22:21
AI,  the only AI I have, promise, don't want to anymore.  AI, you all that stuff. It's all this new stuff and, we're all about working, you know, smarter, not harder. And at the end of the day, right, where you're at is a business transaction, right? If your current company is not going to pay what you're worth, your next one probably will. Right. That's just what it comes down to. I'll leave it there. Questions.  There's my contact if you want. Yeah. So you're talking about the moving on to the next company. Yeah. In your opinion,  company might look at you and say,

22:50
We think you're making enough and we look at the numbers you had, you had, at what point do you pull the trigger and say, you got to take action? Well, how much are you willing to put up with? Right. think that's where it comes down to, right? Yeah, go ahead. Are there numbers about what the average salary increases if you do change jobs? Right. So you have that conversation and you're told, no, your salaries are salaried. Right. Because usually when you change jobs, you get a better offer. So are there any numbers that you can kind of point to that?

23:17
This is just a personal experience for me. I've changed a lot of jobs every two to three years. Glad my boss isn't here tonight to hear that, but whatever. ah It's two to three years and generally I'm either jumping for one reason or another, right? That kind of thing, climbing that ladder or money or whatever.  I've taken some good bumps,  some as much as 20 % to go to the next plate. And again, there's a...

23:37
question of to you, Evan, is the grass always greener on the other side? Sometimes it is and sometimes it is. And that's just the bullet you're willing to put in that chamber and see which one you land on. But generally, the way you climb the ladder is by moving jobs. There just isn't that, I'm going to work for this place for 30 years and get a gold watch and walk off into the sunset, right? That kind of thing. So there isn't that as much as there was, right? So at the end of the day, it's a business transaction and you can't let that messy emotion of, really like the people I work with, I should stay here. you're kind of...

24:04
spewing over there in the corner with the red stapler. You can only go so far. you think that with the demand of these skills, that's going to change though? That's going to be a bigger leverage point for the network engineer to say, listen, there's plenty of them. There are some coming, let me look for like VAR or something like that, getting the CCIEs. Yeah. that paths their numbers even more. Correct. Yeah. I think the certs play into that because to a VAR, to an MSP, they have to keep so many people on stack that are IEs or ARs, whatever they are, architects that they have.

24:32
partnerships and levels and things of nature. that comes into it as well. I think there's room for a lot of movement. People get comfortable and I get it. Back to your point Evan, it's like, you kind of know your limit and your ceiling and you kind of can see the tea leaves of the current company you're in. Like, all right, is there another year two here? Are we doing this business venture that's going to broaden my horizon or whatever that is? If not, then it's like, hey, what are you doing over here? You know, take a flyer and see what happens. Yeah, go ahead. One of the lines of knowing your value within that company. And one of the things that I've

25:00
done almost my entire career  is that I proactively go out and interview. I see open positions  and I'll interview for them. One keeps my  skills and see how I'm relevant in the industry.  They're asking me questions if I can answer them or not. I can tell where I need to get my skills up to speed. And if I don't get an offer, it's fine because a of these I'm just out there practicing.

25:20
And if I get an offer, if it's really good, I know I can come back with that. can choose to go or I decline it. They were where I'm at, but it gives me a barometer of how much other companies are willing to pay for me and what my actual worth is in the industry. And again, keeps you up to speed on those things that you need to.

25:35
be up on that other companies are looking for. So you kind of know what's out in the industry. agree. think, I think that's a good measuring stick because where you're at now may not be using automation. It still may be using MPLS or what, whatever, frame you like, whatever. And it's like, all right, I'm going to take a flyer on this. They're using SD-WAN and, you know, direct ethernet or whatever it is. There's always this measuring stick of keeping your own company honest. This has happened to me the last couple of places. I think for senior level folks, it's like the opportunities tend to find you.

26:02
rather than  you actively looking like taking a flyer on a LinkedIn, oh, let me apply with 700 other people that click this link, right? That kind of thing. Except the last couple, they've come to me and it just, the natural progression and the conversation just started to happen. And it just made sense at that point to move whether, you know, money, title, responsibility, whatever it just happens. I feel like that's a perk of a senior at that point. Cause I think you're a little more sought after than maybe just throwing your name into a pool of 200 people and hoping to get picked. Yeah. Curious if are there cases where it might make sense to talk with.

26:31
your other team members to get a sense of like, what's there doing? Like, cause you could walk into a salary negotiation, but are you going to be paid 20 % less than them? Right. Yeah. That's a real thing. Right. You know, and it's, it's an awkward conversation to have because you're at your peer level and it's like, Oh, what do you make? And it's like, eh, it's not the easiest thing to walk into. get it. You know, I think there's ways to kind of, I'd say gently approach that with just regular conversation or, Oh, Hey, you know, I just started here six months ago. What, you do you know what happened to the other guy or just trying to get that background knowledge.

27:01
of piece that together. But I agree that's a, delicate and an awkward conversation at the same time. But you know, to your point, you got to know your worth, right? Because I think it's great once you get to like a comfort level with your peers, but I think understanding the organization and how they're set up. may have grade level, it may also be based on geography. So senior engineer in the tri-safe may not make, you know, may make more than someone in taxes, I don't know. Again, it's understanding what that organization does.

27:30
to know if you can get that 5 % raise. But if you're already high in that range, they're going to give you just 2-3%. So understand. Yeah, that's fair. And I think that comes down to knowing the business you're in, the place you work for. Because I've been at places where these HR people are going to be, oh, wow, we paid the last guy. I'll choose round numbers. We paid the last guy 100K. This guy's going to come in here and do it for 75. They don't know about each other. And then eventually that sort of comes out in the wash. And you're like, ah, that really kind of

27:57
gets a black mark on the company you thought was pretty decent. I really like it here. And so you realize you're 25K under and you're like, I really like it so much. So that, you know, that's definitely a conversation of they're spending money in the long run because then that makes me want to go look for something that I am. And now they're going to do the whole hiring process over again, which costs them money, right? So pay people what the, you know, a general range, you know, not egregious, but not, you know, pennies. And generally I think people are okay with where they're at. That's it.

28:27
So one of the things that we've heard from a couple of different groups that tends to go over well, if I ask the room right now, who's in a position right now or whose company right now is hiring within their field? If I can just get a raise of hands, awesome. For those of us that are in the room that are thinking, hey, I want to get deeper into this industry, right? I want to be a part of this.  I may not be in networking today. I may not be in systems today, whatever it may be. And I want to be in this. The people that you saw with the hands raised, that's why we're here, right? It's make those connections today.

28:52
make that conversation in today's job market with how things are going, you're gonna get your next job based on the market. It's not necessarily because of LinkedIn. It's not gonna be because you filled out an application. It's gonna be people that you know and the people that you shake hands with prior to you ever filling out that application. As you saw, there was probably 15, 20 hands raised in this room with people who are actively trying to hire people into our industry. I do wanna mention, so part of the change that we saw this year with the USNUA is based off the sponsorship, we are giving Spark Talks. And with those Spark Talks, as you sponsor,

29:22
You are given an opportunity just to talk about your product, right? We are a non-sales oriented organization. So you aren't going to see sales pitches up here. But really what it's about is just giving an understanding of what something is, what a company is doing. We do obviously want to thank our gold sponsor, Nokia, followed by our silver Vellis band  and Arista adds that bronze sponsor that we have here today.

29:43
I'm going to pass things over David's way. We're going to continue the conversation of promotion, right? Engineering or promotion. So I'm going to pass things over to David here to jump in on that topic and we'll continue through the night there. David, if you will. Thank you. A lot of those things that I want to talk about are going to have some crossover with what Pat talked about. Like lot of those things are still are relevant in both asking for raises  and when you're going for a promotion. You'll see a little bit of crossover. I'm starting off with what I'm calling the uncomfortable truth about a lot of promotions. I guarantee almost everybody in here.

30:12
has been at a place  where you saw somebody get promoted that you were like, I'm better than that guy. I work harder than that person. Why did they get promoted? And  from my experience, what I've seen, they got that promotion because they were seen. They made the effort to show their work and be seen in the workplace. And that's a big difference in sitting back and waiting for a promotion, somebody didn't notice what you're doing and actually being seen and  what you're giving back to the company. Starting with the basics. You want to be seen, you want to...

30:40
be able to show your worth. Like step one, if you want to get a promotion, it seems obvious, but you have to be good at your job. Like if you're not great at the current job you have, you're not going to get a promotion to move up to the next level at that company. Before you start looking at how do I get to this next spot, make sure you're doing everything you in your current job so that you're the best. And again, being the best at your job isn't validation that you're going to get a promotion. That's the floor. Doing the best at your job is what you're supposed to be doing. That doesn't mean you deserve a promotion. Being great at your job is

31:10
the bare minimum, right? Do your job, that's the start. From there, if you wanna start engineering to get that promotion, you have to know where you wanna go. Have a plan, don't just wait for the boss to say, hey, there's this spot open up, you wanna try this? Because it might be a terrible job. You might not want that to go in that path. Figure out what your career path actually wants to look like. If you're in a network engineering position in your job and you wanna get into an automation position in your job, look to the automation practice in your company and see how you can get there. Make introductions, start.

31:38
doing things in that current job that could be applied in there. Start working on scripts and showing to them, make connections in there.  But you can't get there, you can't  build a path to somewhere if you don't know the destination yet. Once you know where you want to go, it may not be within your group, might be outside your group. that path uh might be a senior position  within your team. That's a different path than I want to be a part of a different team or a team that's above what I'm doing.

32:04
Maybe I'm in a tack position and I want to get to another engineering position that works on higher level things, more complex issues. You have to know who has influence to get me to that position. And that person who has the influence to get you that promotion isn't always your direct manager. That might be somebody that's two levels above your manager. You have to know who you need to be talking to and be seen by to get that promotion. And a lot of things a lot of people miss is asking for the promotion, letting it be known that you want the promotion.

32:34
that you're looking for it. You just sit back and wait for them to offer it to you. It may never come. If there's a position outside of your role you saw posted on the company website, oh, that's something that I definitely want to get into, find that manager, find who's over that role, make contact with them.  Reach out, say, hey, I saw this role was posted in your team. What are the requirements? What are you looking for for a person in that position? What can I be doing in my role now that would make you look at me getting this position? Make that connection  and let them know that you're looking to move into it.

33:02
Because again, if they don't know, they're not going to look for you. And if you just throw your resume in there, in that internal process to get that promotion, you might just get looked over as just another person on the pile. But if your name's in their mind, now you get a second look, you get a second chance.  And another one of these hard truths that I know is people tell you they work harder, your head down, nose to the grind. That's the path to your promotion.  It's not. You can work as hard as you want. But if nobody knows what you're doing, doesn't count.

33:29
If no one sees your work, did it really happen? You can work as hard as you want, but if it's not being seen, it's not there. You need to start thinking about self-advocacy. Every little thing that you do, bring it up to your manager. If you have something that affects something outside of your group, bring it up to them. Hey, I worked on this awesome project. I saved the company this much. We reduced downtime by this much by doing this. When you're advocating for yourself, don't think of it in tasks. Some of the, one of the things that Pat brought up, don't talk about this technical thing that you did.

33:58
Talk about the impact that it has either in your team or the company. What's the business outcome that this affects? That holds a lot more weight than something like, I closed 47 tickets today, right? So like, I don't care. I thought that was your job. But if you say, reduced response time by 40 % because I was able to close these tickets faster, that's an impact. That leads to customer satisfaction. That's a business outcome. It has impact that you can show why you deserve a promotion.

34:25
Visibility is, I think, is the most important thing. I talk about it a lot. I go through these things like understanding what you've done  and being able to relate that to other teams, to the company. The most important thing you can do when you're trying to get to a promotion. Because again, like said, if you're doing something and no one knows about it, it's not an impact of the company. No one's going to care. You can't wait for somebody to come after you do it. Do things to elevate your work. You do something that affects the entire company. Find ways that you can...

34:52
present it out, volunteer for cross work. If there's another division that's working on a project that you know you can help on, volunteer for that, get your name out there. So now another manager knows who you are.  Make connections within the company. The company has quarterly meetings, monthly meetings where they talk to the whole group, sometimes to the larger organization, ask to present on it. Hey, I have this awesome use case we did where we saved this amount of money. I think it's relevant to other teams so they can have lessons learned from it. Present it up to the large group.

35:22
You know, get your name attached. if you don't, somebody else on the project maybe didn't have as much impact as you. If they do it,  you're going to get overlooked and they get all the glory from that. Put your name on it. Get out there. Write about what you do. Put yourself out there on LinkedIn, on blogs. Just write about it so you can direct it. It helps also with memory. Everybody thinks, I'm working on this project. This is so important right now. There's no way I'm going to forget what I did on this project. Seven months later, you worked on six identical projects and you can't remember what the first one was. Write it out, you know?

35:51
Put yourself out there every time you do something. Check in constantly with your own manager, reach out to them, like, hey, I just did this, this was a great thing, this is how I impacted it. Just send them an email, right? You have a record of what you did. Now they have a record of what you did. Keep a task list for yourself, write it out, hey, I did this project here, I had this impact. If you wait till the end of the year to write about this, to bring it up to your manager in a yearly review, you're gonna forget 90 % of what you did. Have the facts set up so that when it comes up to the end,

36:21
When comes time for you asking for promotions, you have all those facts like Pat said, have those facts lined up, they're all set up so you can present them. What I was doing when I was trying to do, so I was a solutions architect. I was a generalist across pretty much all the technologies. I had a few specialists, specialties around networking and that DevOps, but it wasn't really a defined role. But I just spoke about that a lot because it's what I enjoyed. But I knew I wanted to do more in automation and that DevOps. So instead of waiting for them to...

36:49
create a practice around it or moving in position where that's all it's doing, I started doing that on my own. I started building out decks  and talk tracks on how to communicate to different clients  and how different architectures work and presenting that out. These are how these automations work.  This  is how the industry is using best practices in automation and talking to customers about that. And I would then bring that out  in quarterly meetings.

37:14
I wanted to present on them, hey, I I built this tech. I want to show this to the sales team. I want to show this to the sales team in Texas about this too. Presenting out to as many people as I can so I can get that visibility across as many areas of the company as I could. I build out  things that I enjoy. I knew I wanted to do automation, so I built out automation labs. And then I would present them and show them and share them out with other engineers so they could learn and build from. They my name out there, but at same time making connections and friends. A lot of times promotions go to people who are known, who are likable.

37:43
So if you're helping other teams, you're committing yourself to other projects that you're not usually a part of doing cross project, cross teamwork, if people remember your name because you went outside of your area and outside of your responsibilities to kind of help them out. And then they remember that name, this person was helpful. They're likable. And if somebody comes back to them, hey, you know this guy, is he good? You know, they're going to give you a good recommendation versus somebody no idea who you were. And again, they don't know who you are. They're not going to recommend you for anything. Again, made the same point, like get in front of the right people. Know your path.

38:12
know who you need to be in front of, know the people who have influence over your position, and make sure that what you're doing is visible to them. I knew that the position I wanted, I was in a room, I saw they were doing a reorg, and there was gonna be a NetDevOps, a director level, a NetDevOps position available for a principal architect. And I wanted that position. I was like, is exactly why.

38:34
I want to be doing this is why I came to this company. I knew they were going in this direction. When I saw that position was available, I found out who I was going to be reporting to, who that VP was. I emailed them, I called them, I got to set up a meeting. I didn't pitch myself to them.  I asked them about the role. I showed them that I was interested, showed them my intent. Hey, what does it take to be in this role? What are the responsibilities of role? Again, it's for their benefit knowing who I am that I'm interested, but also I want to make sure this is something that I want to do. Make sure that I'm not like, I don't have this like pipe dream in my head of a promotion. This is going to give me everything I want.

39:04
turns out to be terrible, so I want to make sure I know what I'm getting into. So ahead of the applying, I went out, reached out, talked to them about the role, the responsibilities. Started off by just talking about some of the things that I was already doing that kind of lined up with that role. I was going to give myself visibility. I think there's this myth that a lot of these like VPs and C-suite level employees don't have time to talk to you, they're too busy. In my experience, they want to talk, they want to help out people. Make the time, if you show the ambition that you want to have a conversation with them, they'll make the time for you.

39:32
They'll reach out to the people in upper management, director level, VP level, CIO, CTOs, like get advice from them. They will respond to you. A lot of companies offer mentor programs. They're a great thing to be a part of. A lot of times you'll be paired with a senior, a VP, or director, some manager level people, and you can ask to be put in a certain position. Say, I want somebody who's close to DevOps to be mentored in so that they can help guide you in that.

39:58
promotion path. So being mentors is another great thing. If they have a program in your company, like I highly recommend getting involved in being mentored at your company. It shows initiative. Again, get your name out there. It's all about visibility. The more people you know, the better position you'll be in when it comes to that promotion. More people that can ask about who you are and what you're doing. And building relationships is all about, you know, showing people you can be trusted and that you're liked  and you're helpful. Because again,

40:24
No one wants to hire a guy who doesn't want to talk to anybody. Everybody says you work with them and they're terrible to work with. They're grumpy. They want to work with people they can work with. It's going to be good culture for their team. Making sure that you make those relationships. Help out people.  There is politics involved in it. Get out, introduce yourself, ask to help, and ask for help. Not just asking to help the other people, but reach out beyond your scope and ask.

40:48
or help from others, because then it gets your name out there and they can see something you're working on, but you're asking for their help. You're getting your name out to them. They get to help you out and they get to see the project that you're actually working on. And then you can show your work in that same process. So now they're giving to you, you're giving back to them and what you're doing, and you're showing off some of the work that you're doing. Question about asking about asking someone to be a mentor. What are the expectations you might have around what that actually means? Like, what are you?

41:14
What does that mean for someone to be mentoring you? How does that manifest? So if you don't have a company who's already running a mentor program, it's a point. You can just ask somebody to mentor you. And it might mean something different to the person you're asking. So like to Drew's point, you might want to set expectations on what that mentorship should be. It could be something around just you go there and say, I'm having trouble making connections outside of my group. I don't know.

41:37
how to talk to this level of person. You know, I want to speak to the VP, but I don't know how to engage with them. I don't feel confident in that. Ask them to mentor, make a connection for you. Maybe you're in a, I was in a engineer role, I want to go to an automation role. I can ask somebody that's already in that role, hey, can you show me what you do day to day and what you did to get here? Get their advice and feedback on exactly.

42:00
how they got there as well. So getting their feedback again, and then if they're in a position or a team that you want to be in and they're mentoring you now, now you're in their favor and then they can give a favorable recommendation if you ever decide to try to get promoted into their team as well. And last couple things go over quickly is just, again, getting constant feedback. Every time you do something, present it back to your manager. Hey, this project closed, it went great. Here's a quick summary of everything I did. It doesn't have to be a big lengthy meeting, just keep that feedback loop going. If you do go for a promotion and you get

42:29
denied or somebody gets promoted over you. Don't get angry. Don't get resentful. Don't start talking bad about other people in the company because that looks bad on you if that gets back to anybody else. Take that opportunity to be more curious about why you got passed over. Go to the person who hired that person and hey, I noticed that Todd got this promotion. I was wondering what he did that stuck out to you that led him to get this promotion. And what can I be doing better to get in that same position? Get feedback from there.

42:57
Talk about for track everything you do, weekly bullet points that way when it's time to make a case, you have the evidence all laid out so you know exactly what you did the entire year. Because I guarantee you when it comes time to present it, if you don't have it written down and documented, you will forget key things to bring up that could make your case.  And knowing your environment, knowing when you're in a toxic team versus a team that has a good culture. If you're in a good team, you have a good culture, you like what you're doing, you can take longer, you take more time.

43:24
to grow within that team and be mentored to get that promotion. Toxic team will usually drag you down. That's the sign you want to most likely move companies if it's that toxic, if there's no path to get out of there. Toxic environments can be just everybody in the team being super negative, talking about how bad it was, how they hate somebody, how horrible the job is. That will drag you down too. You might like it, but somebody that keeps telling you how terrible it is will eventually get into your mindset and you'll start.

43:53
to hate it as well. Try to get out of those toxic environments. Don't stay in there too long. And invest in soft skills. A lot of times it's the person that wasn't as technical as you got promoted past you because they were more, you know, legible to leadership. They could talk to them. They could convey why they deserve that better than you did. Right? Be visible, know how to talk about it. Any questions?

44:21
One of the earlier presentations is the correlation to taking certifications that are outside of technical roles, like taking a servant leadership and getting a servant leadership certification. And that translates to everything that we were just saying and improving their soft skills, being able to present, being able to talk to senior leadership, how to engage people better on your team within your organization. So, you know, it's great that we get these.

44:51
technical certification, but those other certifications do translate into making more money. Absolutely. That's one of the biggest things I see with a lot of technical people is they lack the communication soft skills, especially once I moved out of being in operations and enterprise into a, you know, more of a pre-sales role where I would talk to customers a lot. see a lot of the, uh, our

45:12
delivery side guys try to move up into that resale sort of area where they would try to then be in front of customers. You can see the failure of those soft skills come to play where they were very technical, very good at delivery, but being able to convey that same thing they were doing in delivery to a customer in a meaningful way is very difficult for them. So I think building up your soft skills is very important. LinkedIn Learning has great classes for building your soft skills communication skills.

45:37
Maybe Andy can drop a link to the most soft skill training from LinkedIn and to the post you up later with these recordings. Thank you.

45:47
I think one of the things we heard here and then underlying tone brand matters right and we talk about brand its personal brand it what people think about you within your organization where leadership thinks about you what they realize that you're doing at any point in time and what's associated to your name so I think it is an underlying tone that we're hearing and I know I should perform I representing myself to be any of the experts that we've heard from tonight so far right but.

46:10
Something to think about is you're kind of continuing to look at your career, look at where you're going. And as we're hearing the topics we're talking about, brand is one of those key things that I think we continue to hear. We talked a lot about the salaries, right? We moved to the promotions and one of the things, and I think this is specific to this room and pertinent to this room is some of us aren't in the industry today, right? Or some of us are in a separate industry. We're doing something slightly different. We might be sales engineers. We want to go into more of a networking career. We might be in networking. We want to go into more of a sales engineering role.

46:37
And I think our next speaker really kind of speaks to some of that and talking about career paths in this industry, right? And how you kind of move in between them. So I'm gonna pass things over here to Danny. We're gonna trade over to his slide and we're gonna jump into a little bit more about career paths in the networking industry as a whole. So Dwight just did my whole talk track. So I mean, if y'all wanna like go to the bathroom or something right now, it'd be a good time. ah

47:00
What Dwight said is probably the most important part. Really the biggest thing is brand. I hear it all the time. If you think about Nokia, what was the number one thing we all said? The cell phones. We can drop them from 30 stories and they bounce off the ground. We pick them up and we're calling. When I think about Nokia now, the first thing that came to mind for me is like, oh yeah, service provider. That's where all my light goes through. And when we think about Cisco, Juniper, Interhead, network, when we think about Microsoft, depending if you're an Apple user, we think either like 0365 or we're thinking like...

47:28
It's that stuff that never works on my computer. But ultimately it does come down to brand. And when I think of brand, think of  let's pick Nike. They make shoes. We all know that. Are we going to spend $300 on the shoes? Well, maybe. Depends on what we're doing there. So as I'm kind of going through and we're talking about brand, I also think about passion because for me, I've been following my passion for 20 years. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. And you can see on here like 20 years and I got four jobs. That's it. I still don't know what I want to do, but I'm having a lot of fun trying to figure it out.

47:58
And as I'm going through, I'm passionate about each thing and I'm building my brand off of that. Just to kind of give the quick rundown, why I get to be up here. So  starting 2005, U.S.  Marine Corps, prior to that, I would, I'm sure we all remember, yeah, you had everybody raise their hands. We're good, right, Jeff? Like who didn't reboot their wifi by unplugging and plugging it back in? That's how we did our troubleshooting back in like circa 2000. We still do the same thing.

48:22
Right? I mean, I changed. was gonna say CWNE, right? That was you? Yeah. Yeah. So no, that's still how it 90 % of the problem just unplugged in on me. That's all it is. It ran out of RF. It needed a quick run. And I will tell you guys, I got like four slides. So super interactive, please. The reason I bring this up though is Marine Corps. So started out data network specialist, sounds about right. It was 0651. That's I remembered it. That meant I got to do anything with the power cables. So systems, boy.

48:52
came out during my time, networks, firewalls. You have a power cord, that's our problem. From there, that's too much stuff. I didn't have a lot of fun doing it, followed my passion. I had a lot of fun in RF, like big RF, satellite RF. From that, I did a lot of communication liaison work with the Army. So they'd send me over to an Army base. I got to go play representing my unit. And so that was all RF. That was fun for a while. Then I was like, hey, you know what? What about future planning?

49:19
So take the RF, take the network stuff, follow that passion. From there, after the five-year contract, went over to the University of Maryland Medical, being a Pennsylvania crowd, I'm sorry, I'm a Maryland boy. One passion, senior network engineering. Again, lots of fun,  a lot to play with, a lot of different functionality there. I started getting into systems. So how many times can we configure the same switch off of Golden Config? Not a lot. But then if we start looking at, hey, you know what, what if I send everything to um Syslog?

49:49
Hey, I want it on our syslog. Well, now I need to learn Linux. So I started following a passion for Linux. Again, network team, I get it, but why not? You know, Linux, let's see what's in there. And there's, you can run VRRP through, what is that, a heartbeat D or something. So I started following that passion. It was fun. From there, kind of outgrew, started looking for more things. So senior deployment engineer was a lot of fun. I got to see not just one broken network, but a whole lot. Not everybody's was broke, obviously, but it was a lot of fun because you go in there and you go, how are you doing things?

50:17
Why are you doing those things? And so you kind of get to see how everybody's working and learn from them a lot of times. So I'm following a passion again, because now I get to see how other people are doing it and learning from them. We can be CCIEs, if I don't, or JNCIEs, make sure we get everybody in the crowd. Nokia IEs, I forget about you, Jeff. uh But at the end of the day, how are you using it? Because all that is is a configuration.

50:41
And so now I'm getting to follow that passion and figuring out how you're putting things out there. From there, I thought maybe I'd be a good uh manager. Spoiler, I wasn't.  That was not  a passion I should have followed.  From that, I learned design architect. So that's actually probably the most fun for me because I have the option to play on the keyboard. But ultimately, I get to kind of solve the problem. I listen to what it is, say, OK, here's a reference architecture. You need a box that does this. Not Cisco, not Juniper, not Nokia, not Aruba. uh

51:10
Kind the same now, but I said, you need a box that does this. You need a box of firewalls. You need something to police your identity. And from there, you get to hear all sorts of answers. So going back, it's not just listening to a customer's environment, working in a customer environment. It's designing that environment and saying, here's what I'm going to end up giving you at the end of the day. Going back, so just to kind of backtrack before we hit the iron bow piece. When it was a network engineer, here's the tools I have. And I love configuring these and getting that end result. At the design architect level, I love seeing that outcome.

51:39
Both are awesome and both are needed. It's just that's what I wanted to look at is more outcome-based. So that's why I fell into that design architect and then jumping over to Ironbow,  principal design architect. So not a big change there, just principal. But ultimately, and I should have asked before I clicked over this, how many people are working in an organization where you are the IT department? So not service provider, not MSB, really your organization, you are.

52:07
working within that IT department, you're managing the network, only one network only. That's probably similar to an org chart you guys are familiar with, because this is what I had at University of Maryland Medical. There was a lot of administrators, NOC, engineers, that kind of group, that funneled into one manager, and those managers funneled into one director. My takeaway from this as I'm going through, and if that's wrong, let me know, please. But this is how I viewed what I was working in. I remember my manager saying, hey, I gotta fight with three other managers to get to director.

52:37
And in the back of my head, what I just heard is the only way I can get promoted is if this guy gets promoted and him and my director are the same age. That's bad news for me. I'm tapped out. I'm already at the senior level. What's left for me? That was literally it. You know, it was fantastic. I loved working there. We got to new technology. But in terms of where my career is going to go, I'm maxed out. And that's not to say when that manager bumps up, I'm fighting with everybody else on the team for that spot, even if that's the right skill set. Because like I said, going back,

53:07
there's a huge difference between managing and doing, because I did not like managing. Let me just reiterate that for those that didn't hear it. Huge difference. And this is another huge misconception to me. I hate that point, because  that's exactly how I saw it. If I'm really, really, really good at being a network engineer, then I'll get to be the network manager. That's not true at all, because when you're the manager, yeah, you got to make sure you guys aren't lying to you, but think about payroll.

53:36
Think about PTO, FMLA, all of these management requirements that have nothing to do with the tech. My manager, not good at the CLI. He wasn't. But he was pretty good about making sure I got paid and I got my time off and that's good with me. And advocating. That was another big one, is he advocating up? There's a lot of different pieces to the management. So when I was there, I really wanted this spot. Looking back, no, this is where I wanted to be. And so the reason I kind of bring this up and ask the question is, it's all over the place.

54:05
Again, quick poll, who in the room is a network engineer?  Pretty much like everybody except the selling guy.  But who's a solution engineer? Far less.  For the solution engineers, do you know how to network? I was gonna say, yeah, you're like, oh, I shouldn't raise my hand now. But yeah, you know how to network. It's the same skill set, it's a different outcome.

54:25
It's a different passion, right? And it's a different brand when you guys are going through because when you're talking about the solution you're providing, you're not saying, okay, here's how we're going to configure this on the CLI or here's the orchestrator we're using. Here's what I'm going to give you at the end of the day. And when you're passionate about helping people in that way,  you still got to know the tech. That's not going to go away. But you have a lot more fun because now you're going, hey, I  built this ridiculous solution that's 15 different components and I made it so easy. They love it and we're using it every day.

54:54
So I threw a whole bunch up here. I will tell you, this is from my mind. And if you haven't figured out from me talking, that should scare you right off the bat. But really when we're going through, when we look at the network manager for organizational IT, their job is to make sure that that organization still has an output. When you look at the network manager, which isn't up here for professional services, that's to make sure the team's out there, certified, they know what they're doing for our customer. When we're talking, that statement of work goes out, we're not promising something we shouldn't be.

55:22
Managed services, whole different perspective. Sales and Solution, we have your SEM. His job is to make sure that that team isn't out there over-promising or anything else, making sure the right stuff's coming out. Service management, again, whole different department. And this is just the five that I thought of off the top of my head. So like management is a completely different track than engineering to a point. And again, this is gonna surely depend on the size of your organization, but like the manager in my organization has multiple teams under him. He doesn't do...

55:52
I mean, not that he isn't technical, but he doesn't do technical. There's no time. He's managing people. He's managing up. He's managing contract. He's managing procurement, like all that stuff. It's a very different world than what, you know, an engineer does. And even like when you start breaking down engineering, like they're engineers that don't want to do architecture.  They're operations guys that just want to do operations. And there's, you know, different career paths, guess, inherently depending on.

56:14
role but... funny when you said that I always like think of the opposite. know, engineering mind, I already have to throw out the objection. 100 % and to your point, the guy managing contract services going out, nothing to do with engineering. I also have a buddy that's an engineer that spent three months in somewhere in Central America because the way they called a manager is a technical manager. So he was expected to do everything. It's going to depend on the size of the org I'm sure as well and that's different, know, again.

56:40
If you have 15 engineers, your manager probably does a lot less technical than if you're a team of And I think that's why I bring it up. When we're talking network engineering, and like I said, that seemed like consensus to everybody. Really, the point I try to get across with it is follow your passion. So toxic workplace. I think the biggest problem I've seen with toxic workplaces really comes back to that's not your passion. You're in that workplace, you're doing the job, sure.

57:04
Maybe you're the best at the job. I've seen that too, but you don't like it. That's not what you're trying to do there. And so your passion isn't there. And so what do you do? You complain. And when we look at the salaries, for example, a network engineer that's designing systems or working on systems that are highly classified with TS clearances, and you are the output going back to our service, professional services. If you are the output and you are the money generator, you're probably getting a little bit more money. Or if you're the one selling it, you'll probably get more money then too. So really when we look at it, to me,

57:33
There's gonna be different pay ranges and there's gonna be different spots. But ultimately, what's your passion? Like I said, that's real quick four slides. I can talk a lot in four slides. When it comes down to it, find your passion. This is my biggest takeaway of anything. Find your passion, find your people. The CW and  E guy in the back, I'm definitely chatting him up because I got some wifi horror stories and I need somebody to commiserate with. How hard can people make a layer one technology? Like seriously, you didn't hear the Nokia guys complaining about their light.

58:00
Why  do we have this whole thing with RF?  And so when it comes down to it, like literally find it. I've been into Raspberry Pis, like Arduino controllers. I've been into Linux. I've been into name it. And at the end of the day, I'm a multi-domain architect because I had fun chasing all those passions. I've learned something along the way. Honestly, like right now, I love where I'm at. And that to me is really what it comes down to is find something when you're going through work that excites you, that gets you interested.

58:29
And then hunt it down. I mean, I'm gonna pick on Andy, because he's coming up next. This is Dwight's unofficial way, if you guys haven't noticed, to let you know.  Hurry it up. Non-verbal. Also, we got Zach over here, by the way. So Zach's job is, if I go too long, he's gonna run and spear me from this side. Yeah, and it's on camera, so we'll have the proof  going back. Yeah, we'll be good.  So at the end of the day, find out what makes you happy. Because there's a million different pieces, even when we just talk about networking. Who here works on Skado, by the way? That was one of the things I wanted to ask earlier.

58:58
IoT Skata Networks. There we go. That sounds about right. Nobody wants to admit it, but they're there.  I had no clue about Skata until I started playing with microcontrollers and going, what is  RS485? OK, how does that work? And from there, like designing skaters afterwards, because you just start learning, OK, well, how does the knee bone connect to the shin bone? So find your passion. Look on YouTube. Find LinkedIn people. uh Andy's coming up next. Andy has art and network engineering. Again, huge passion I had.

59:27
You know, well, half, sorry, half, present tense. Right, right, you saw that. Because it really is, find your group and talk to them. There's so many different opportunities out there and as you chase them, you'll find more and more people, events like this. Really,  that's my pitch. Follow what you love and you'll find the people that are just as passionate.  Awesome, well appreciate y'all's time. Danny's always a trick. We appreciate everybody taking the time tonight, right?

59:53
We're a couple minutes over. So we have one more presentation tonight. We're going to wrap up with Andy talking about the confession of a CLI lifer, right? And if you've been here at the PA Nugs before, Andy's given a couple of presentations, right? And he has a really interesting story about how his career has evolved from pre-COVID to post-COVID, so where he started to where he's at now. And he'll cover some of that here tonight as we kind of wrap up the story of the career day here. But Andy, if you want to. Before I start the timer, I just want to call out what Andy said about the people. So.

01:00:22
We started a podcast in 2020 and COVID. Danny was our first guest and I haven't seen him ever. This is my first time meeting him in person. And it's just so cool that when you said, your people, find your community, I trudged this road alone for years in my Comcast cable truck, studying for the CCNA. When everybody I worked with told me I was wasting my time, money and effort because what you're doing is dumb. Found packet pushers and I used to listen to them in my truck moving around. And that was kind of my first community. And I think it's super important to find your people and

01:00:52
This is an example of that. So I'm just glad you called that out. Starting the timer. All right. So my name is Andy Lapteff. I'm a career network engineer turned product marketing manager at Nokia data center. It is my hope that by the end of this talk, you will realize that the biggest thing holding you back in your career could be the story that you're telling yourself about yourself. The last time I gave this talk was at Autocon 4 in front of 900 people.

01:01:16
I'm a little less nervous now, so thank you for not being 900 people. I think I had a panic attack in the middle of it, lost my spot, and that sucked. That's my dog, Jolene. She's my best friend in whole wide world. So I am gonna tell you the story of the past couple years of my career. A few years ago, and I'm driving along,  the windows are down, the music's on, I'm by myself. Things seemed pretty good. I'd been out of work for close to a year at this point, so I lost my job, and the longer that I was out of work and couldn't find a job, again, like...

01:01:43
I'm podcaster guy. I'm a lover of LinkedIn. People know who I am. Of course I'm going to get a job. But I was struggling to find a job. And I didn't understand why. I'd worked in huge Fortune 50 global data centers. And I was just struggling. So I'm driving along and I'm having a day. And the longer this unemployment dragged on, the louder this voice got. The voice said things to me like, why can't you find a job? What's taking so long? You're failing. You're a failure. Maybe.

01:02:12
your family would be better off without you. Still can't say that without getting choked up. It was that thought that changed everything for me. It was lightning bolt. It shocked the hell out of me and kind of woke me from the slumber. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,  what is happening here?  So I had what some call a moment of clarity in that dark spot. I could finally see things that I hadn't seen in years. And what I realized was that it was my thinking that was keeping me stuck. I could not produce what I wanted in my life and in my career because of a story I told myself.

01:02:42
in my head. I've been studying storytelling the past couple years as  a product marketing manager and it's amazing to me the magic that telling a good story can do. Before the written word and all that stuff, mean everything that was ever passed on from person to person, generation to generation was a story. We are built for story and it's a wonderful way to get around people's what we'll hear about soon like their cognitive biases, their beliefs. They don't even know that their brain's doing what they're doing but story is a little trick so I'll show you that in a second. This is me.

01:03:11
My first network engineering job, seems about right. Yeah, Comcast knock, everything was on fire all the time. This was probably midnight. I worked midnight for a year. It was hell, I didn't sleep, my stomach hurt. This is the job of a network engineer, right? At least this was my experience. It's hard, it's arduous, things are breaking all the time, everything's on fire. I came up at a time, I was studying for my CCNA, I guess in like 2010, 2011. The CLI was the job, the CLI was the material. I was a proud CLI lifer. Like that is the job.

01:03:40
If you can hack away in the CLI and create networks, ta-da, proud CLI lifer forever. Was that a Fisherman magazine that you had in the background there? It was. I was actually in the Fisherman magazine. I caught a 33 pound striper and LBI. That's not it. But thank you for,  thank you for seeing that.  That fish won me 500 bucks.  So if you were to ask me at the time how I felt about network automation, I would give you the full Michael Scott meltdown. No God, please no. Leave me the hell alone.

01:04:08
I have been anti-automation for years. Do not do that publicly. It's a terrible career move. But I meant it. Like,  I'm authentic and I tell people how I feel. And  there was a reason that I was so  against automation. So I failed out of computer science in college. I graduated high school and I wanted to work in tech because I love taking things apart. First thing I tried to fix and almost died trying to fix was my step-dads reel to reel. I don't know if you're old enough to remember those, but they were this magnetic tape that would go back and forth.

01:04:37
His stopped working. It was in like seventh grade. I took it apart. sitting on the floor and I remember hearing, fuses can go bad. So I touched the fuse while it's plugged in with my hands. Didn't go bad? I blacked out and when I came to the reel to reel, which was very heavy, was across the room. I don't know how it got over there and it felt like God punched me in the kidneys. I don't know what happened with this electricity, but I think I should have been killed and wasn't. In spite of that experience, I like taking things apart. I'm a tinker. I'm curious.

01:05:05
So I tried to go to school for computer science first semester, C++,  calculus.  No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many tutors and after school and all this stuff, I just couldn't hack it, man. That experience built a deep neural pathway in my brain, which is coding is for developers and you, my friend, are not a developer. Me not smart enough to do this. All right, so now we get into cognitive biases. My friend, Mike Bushong, who is...

01:05:29
Kind of an unspoken mentor, I guess, and I've worked with him in a couple different places. He talks a lot about cognitive biases. Long story short, what that is, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 70s, they're these brilliant scientists, behavioral, whatever people,  and they discovered it's a very thick book. It's called Thinking Fast and Slow. You can try to read it, it's really hard. There's some easier entrances into that, like the Adam Grant book that I can't remember because Memory of a Goldfish. But if you're interested in this material afterward, I can suggest some books, but.

01:05:57
Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, they discovered that we have these things called cognitive biases. What are they? Our brains take mental shortcuts to simplify complexity in the world. So as an example, there's something called negativity bias. Let's say you do something at work and 10 people say, that a boy, Danny, that was awesome. Good job. And the one guy, Brian Flicker says, I kind of sucked. I don't know, man. I wasn't really impressed. Which do you think your brain weighs more? The negative, right?

01:06:24
negativity bias is  one of the 400 biases they identified. Our brains weigh negative experiences 10 to one order of magnitude to positive experiences. Why? Because the people who are out in the tundra scared to death and looking for the tigers live longer. You pass that on and your generations continue. So there's a lot of different biases like that. All right, so, fail at computer science, blah, blah. uh Then I get laid off. And what happened in this layoff was that every single row I looked at,

01:06:54
Again, after yelling for years to tens of thousands of people on my podcast, on every LinkedIn follower I had that might have given me a job, me yelling, automation sucks, they're trying to take our jobs, I didn't get into networking to be a coder. Now I get laid off and every single networking job I look at has basic automation skills and requirements.

01:07:17
Yeah, it got so bad that I circled back to the fintech role I had that worked me to the bone and almost killed me. I circled back to them and said, Hey man, you know, got anything? I was a senior network engineer, an engineer there running really big projects. And I didn't even qualify for that job anymore because without basic Python skills, you can't even get the job that I was a senior network engineer. So that kind of sucked through all this through my dark moment through, Oh my God, I'm never going to get a job again. This is terrible. I decided, okay, the story I've been telling myself.

01:07:46
I'm hoping is wrong because I have to learn automation or I'm never going to work in networking again. So I started small. I started Dwan Lightfoot's class that used to be free  network programmability for whatever engineers. Fantastic course. Started learning Linux, Python, VS code, all the stuff you people have been telling me for years. And I'm like, no. And it's like anything. Like we learn hard things. Like none of this stuff is easy. Right. So I just kept my head down. It sucked. It was hard. I was uncomfortable. I still don't like it. But

01:08:15
Something happened, okay? So I ran a Python script that logged into a router in my home lab using Netmeco, the SSH then ran a show ver and put the output on the screen. My brain exploded, because I got a small win. I'm like, oh my God, this isn't impossible.  This isn't me being too dumb to learn to code and failing at a computer. I can do this now. I was wrong. Maybe it's not as bad as I thought it was. So that was my win. It kinda changed everything. I went on from that.

01:08:43
to land my dream role I'm in now, which is data center automation.  The irony's never lost on me that I'm the data center automation guy.

01:08:53
Yeah. But how did that change? It changed because  I questioned my assumptions, my beliefs in myself out of sheer desperation. Like this isn't a you know, this isn't me being brilliant. This is me being desperate. Like, oh my God, I got to get a job. What am I going to do? I started these Python parties online. I was literally reading out of a Python book and recording it and releasing them as episodes. Sorry. Probably not great, right? As a fellow podcaster here, like who  the hell wants to listen to you read a book? But a community.

01:09:21
kind of sprouted up around me and we started studying Python and people in our Discord server. And so, you know, I get this job and we got a community and we're studying and like, I mean, I don't love it, but I'm not terrified of it. And now I can see that I can do it, that I, you know, like again, we do hard things. So my identity changed learning in public. I've embraced DevOps. I have VS code installed on my Mac. It's gross, right? Like I'm doing something with John Cappabianco in a couple of weeks. I don't know if you know John, he's like the automation guru turned AI guru and

01:09:50
We're gonna do a bunch of magic with VS Code and Co-Pilot and  Netbox and an LLM. I'm gonna talk, and this will be released soon on the show, but I'm gonna talk in natural language to  whatever the hell John's gonna help me build, and it's gonna call over to Netbox and tell me what circuits are in Atlanta. Like,  my job in FinTech, if you ask us what circuits were in Atlanta, come back in three weeks. Like, that was a nightmare just to answer that question. And we're gonna build something, I can just ask a system and it's gonna tell me. So I'm pretty compelled by this stuff and what's happening.

01:10:18
So the call to action really honestly is if you're an expert, if you're the DevOps guy, if you know Python and you either have people in your sphere or know people who are like, I can't do this, this isn't for me, I didn't get in this for coding, the best thing you can do for them, which is what I needed was to try to help them overcome their cognitive biases. They don't even  know what they don't know. They can't even hear you when you're talking to them. If you told me you need to learn coding, like screw you, I'm a network engineer.

01:10:48
It took a year of being unemployed and almost wanting to drive off a cliff to learn this stuff. That's what we're up against. NAF, at Autocon, they released their data. 70 % or 75 % of networks aren't automated at all or in any meaningful way. That's a lot of network engineers who are like, hmm, I'm not doing it. No, this isn't for me. I used to think AI was gonna take your jobs. That's silly. I see that that's not true because automation is so piss poor in adoption. What I've seen with LLMs and AI and all the money getting invested into it, if you're paying attention,

01:11:17
There seems to be a lot of displacement coming. And John Capo said at Autocon, those 70 % of people who aren't doing anything are gonna be displaced by genetic AI and agents and all this stuff. The industry is not gonna retrain 70 % of it. So for me, why I'm out here, if you're an expert, dear God, try to tell better stories. Try to compel these people that, know, like, hey man, you know, more sleep at night, less outages, like whatever it is you can do to show them the advantages of what you're doing.

01:11:45
and overcome their biases. And for the CLI lifers like me out there, don't wait for the bad thing to happen. Disruption is coming, AI is gasoline on that, they're gonna take our jobs automation fire.  I don't know if it's months, years, I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I've seen some really, I'll end with this,  I'm responsible for a tool that I won't name that can troubleshoot networks better than I can. And I've created some content and released it, but I can literally have the most complex, insane wall of alarm stuff that happens. And I...

01:12:14
I literally just say to this AOPs thing what just happened and in like 10 seconds it goes through all this telemetry, all these VTEPs. Oh, like everything that would have taken me eight hours to even figure out what's happening and can tell me we looked at everything, here's the thing, here's how to fix it, go. It's real, it's here. And  I think that we have to skill up now so that you  don't wind up like me driving down the street thinking that you can't do this thing anymore. I hope that made some sense. hope it helps anybody.  Thank you for your time, Dwight.

01:12:44
A couple of things we want to mention as we wrap up. So first and foremost, we appreciate all of you being here in the room, right? If it wasn't for the people here, we wouldn't be having these things. We wouldn't be able to continue to produce these meetings. It's really about the people here. So what we're really trying to do is build a community and that being the case, bring people with, right? And I wanted to pause again, another round of applause for the various speakers that we had tonight. had a bunch topic, bunch of conversations. Hey folks.

01:13:10
If you like what you heard today, please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher.  You can find us on socials at Art of NetEng, and you can visit linktree.com slash art of net eng  for links to all of our content, including the A1 Merc Store and our virtual community on Discord called It's All About the Journey.  You can see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering.  That's youtube.com forward slash art of net eng.  Thanks for listening.