eBay is looking for network heavies...

Thu Jun 11 13:37:08 UTC 2015

I really wonder how people get into this field today.  It has gotten
incredibly complex and I've been learning since before I was a teenager
(back when it was much more simple).

I'm 31 now, but I started getting into computers and specifically
networking at a very young age (elementary school).  We had a pair of
teachers that were enthusiasts and built up a computer lab with everything
on token ring running Novell.  I thought the fact that I could change to a
different PC by driver letter in DOS was the most amazing thing I had ever
seen in the 3rd grade.  From there I was really hooked, got really into
BBSing, and when the first dial-up ISPs started popping up I made it a
point to get a job with them.

My school district didn't offer a technical program for Internetworking but
they had a technical school that competed in the SkillsUSA competitions and
approached me about competing in the Internetworking event, without any
education or mentor I won the gold medal at the State level both years I
competed and went on to the nationals (where that lack of guidance and
access to equipment to train on meant I got my slice of humble pie).  I
held my own, but the guys who won at the national level were just so much
more prepared.  Despite the stigma of SkillsUSA being trades focused, the
Internetworking competition was a really great experience that mixed
physical networking and basically a CCNA level of theory (they actually
used an old copy of the CCNA as the exam).

During this same time I got a paid internship for the local hospital and
rebuilt their entire network after seeing the nightmare it was (they had
the AS400 with all their healthcare data sitting on a public IP address
with no firewall and default QSECOFR credentials sitting there for the
taking with 5020 over IP enabled).  It was pretty crazy for a high school
student to be doing a full redesign of a network for a healthcare provider,
even building frame-relay links between facilities and convincing the local
cable company to provide dark fiber between a few.

When I went to university I made it a point to get student employment with
the NOC they ran to provide all of the public schools and libraries in the
state with their Internet access, and that evolved into a full time job for
them within a few years.

Looking back, it's been like a perfect storm of opportunity that I just
don't think exists today.  I'm really happy I was born when I was and able
to have a front row seat to see the explosion of the Internet.  I don't
know if I'm just getting "old" but I feel like technology has gotten so
easy for young people that most of them have no idea how it works, and no
desire to know.

When we interview for new people, especially fresh out of school, its
really disappointing when I hear them start to talk about a /24 as a "class
C" and go on to find out the extent of their understanding ends at a
textbook that is 20 years out of date.  When I ask if they use Linux and
they respond yes, I start getting into the details and learn they don't
even know the basics on the CLI like being able to find and kill a process
(thanks, Ubuntu).  I think it's a big part of why the industry finds so
little value in a degree vs. experience.

That said, there are schools with dedicated networking programs that have
really impressed me.  RIT is the first that comes to mind.

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 8:53 AM, William Waites <wwaites at tardis.ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 14:24:31 +0200, Ruairi Carroll <
> ruairi.carroll at gmail.com> said:
>
>     > What I found is that back in early-mid 00's, the industry was a
>     > black box.  Unless you knew someone inside of the industry...
>
> I suspect this is partly a result of the consolidation that went
> on. In the mid 1990s when I started, there were tons of small mom and
> pop ISPs with 28.8 modems stacked on Ikea shelving. The way that I got
> my first job as a student was literally by hanging around one of them
> and pestering them until they hired me part time. These small ISPs
> grew and most were eventually were acquired and people who stuck
> around through that -- especially the often quite complicated network
> integration that happens after acquisitions -- learned quite a lot
> about how the Internet operates at a variety of scales and saw a
> variety of different architectures and technical strategies.
>
> The scale and stability of today's Internet means that path is mostly
> closed now I think, particularly if what you want to do is get a job
> at a big company. But not entirely, there are still lots of rich
> field-learning opportunities on the periphery, in places where large
> carriers fear to tread...
>
> -w
>

-- 
Ray Patrick Soucy
Network Engineer
University of Maine System

T: 207-561-3526
F: 207-561-3531

MaineREN, Maine's Research and Education Network
www.maineren.net