eBay is looking for network heavies...

Thu Jun 11 14:27:57 UTC 2015

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