eBay is looking for network heavies...

Thu Jun 11 14:55:41 UTC 2015

+1 for experience.. being able to teach yourself just about anything drops
you into the top 20% of any industry (with maybe a few exceptions). one
thing I noticed is that the best professionals I met out there are just as
good with people as they are with routers and console screens. IT is
usually just a cost center (unless you work for a tech company), so if you
learn how to navigate office politics and push change, then you will have a
spot with the packet wrangling Gods.

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Steve Mikulasik <Steve.Mikulasik at civeo.com>
wrote:

> 25 year old neteng reporting in. I got into networking when I wanted to
> play Quake against my brother and trying to share a single dial-up
> connection between all the computers in the house.
>
> Well I still have a long way to go (employed full time in IT for just over
> 6 years), I think I am ahead of most IT pros in my age group. At the end of
> the day us young kids learned the same way most of you did, bit of
> education, and the vast majority from experience.
>
> I am at the point know where my self-education skills are effective enough
> that I can learn whatever I don't know and solve most any problem I come
> across. From what others have said, I think this is the key to success in
> this field, although I think this is a skill you develop early in life or
> you never get it. I am now trying to learn the things I didn't know I
> needed to know to solve problems I didn't know existed.
>
> I do agree there isn't a big interest from youth in this field. A lot of
> people get introduced to networking through education and never develop a
> passion for it. When they graduate they choose IT areas more interesting to
> themselves. Most schools are teaching recycled CCNA curriculum and/or
> thinking from the early 90s. Can't blame anyone who hasn't developed a
> passion for networking outside of education for not entering the field.
> Memorizing what an Ethernet frame looks like doesn't build an appreciation
> for networking, unless you can see the bigger picture.
>
> Steve Mikulasik
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Ray Soucy
> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2015 7:37 AM
> To: William Waites
> Cc: NANOG
> Subject: Re: eBay is looking for network heavies...
>
> 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
>
>