Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.

Wed Nov 30 18:53:10 UTC 2011

tyler,

some additional "soft" skills that will help you distinguish yourself
from others:

- learn to write well:  take some creative writing classes in addition
  to technical writing.  being able to efficiently write clear,
  concise, and effective documentation is a skill that is necessary,
  and i daresay, required, especially for senior-level staff.

- learn how to present/speak:  join the local toastermasters.  grok
  tufte's 'visual display of quantitative information' (or something
  similar -- this goes back to writing effective and concise
  documentation)

- in addition to business and finance, learn negotiation techniques.
  'getting to yes' is a good book; there are many others

- learn time/task/project management:  you should be able to accurately
  guage how long things take, task interdepence, and how to structure a
  (simple) project.  try a few different methods to find one that works
  for you, and then build and rebuild your home lab using your project
  plan.  this is also a good time to practise documentation ;)

- get involved:  join/start local users groups, go to a conference or
  two, subscribe to/read mailing lists on topics which interest you, or
  which are relevant to something you are studying/playing with

- to reiterate what others have said:
  learn to troubleshoot.  learn to troubleshoot.  learn to troubleshoot.
  - develop an efficient, comprehensive methodology, and stick to it (a
    checklist can be helpful)
  - learn to take notes as you work through your procedure (what you
    did, what was the result:  this will aid in writing both root-cause
    reports and operational procedures -- more documentation practise)
  - as you gain experience, re-evaluate and optimise, but be consistent
    in your approach
  - be able to explain and justify your procedure(s); teaching and
    learning from others makes you both better. mentoring will be an
    extremely valuable skill to your hiring manager/team (and will
    better position you for leadership roles)

- learn how to use $favourite_search_engine in order to find answers

you might also consider getting a juniper j-series box (or running
bird on a *nix box, or three).  a ccnp will teach you cisco's way, but
most provider networks are heterogenous, and the ability to understand
a non-cisco device (and moreover, a non-cisco-style cli/config), will
benefit you long-term (imho).

above all, have fun with what you are doing.  this industry can be a
lot of fun, but it is also stressful, and if you aren't enjoying what
you are learning/doing, it might be time to re-evaluate your
focus/priorities.

hth
/joshua