Comments on: A Crossroads in My Networking Career

By: notworkd

notworkd — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 23:48:10 +0000

Fully agree with this. I’m effectively keeping my CCNP/IE Study going purely to maintain a certification which means enough to a non-Industry-savvy HR Rep, in order to get my foot in the door; but in practice, I find myself using multi-vendor skills, and Coding (be that Python, PHP, EEM, TCL or whatever works to do the job) is the glue that allow me to do my job.

Given the direction everything is taking with Whitebox/SDN/disaggregation/Cloud/etc, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the CCxx Program were to disappear entirely, or diminish in significance – to such a stage that a non-involved HR staffer removes it as a pre-requisite of applying for a Network/IT/DevOps position.

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By: Stephen Redlack

Stephen Redlack — Sun, 06 Aug 2017 19:36:25 +0000

I get where you’re coming from in this post.
I started as a professional developer and moved into the networking field through various twists of fate.
Now, as a manager of a networking & telecommunications team, I find my programming experience invaluable for keeping up with the demands of the job.
Deep networking knowledge helps with the design and implementation of sane networking projects, while programming experience helps with all sorts of tangential tasks (especially at scale).
Some particularly interesting examples (all done in Python):
I’ve written a program to review phone billing from multiple providers across thousands of numbers in order to plan system changes and verify invoices.
I’ve written a system to review WAN outages and compare them to provider SLAs for credit reimbursement.
Built a ticket review system to better assess the team’s tasks and find points for process improvement.
So yea, I find that programming skills are a force multiplier that can help me automate-out the boring stuff and focus on the high leverage work. (and like you mentioned, getting a program to work properly is very satisfying and fun)
Food for thought.

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By: fred baker

fred baker — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 01:28:20 +0000

Scripting will make your everyday job must easier as you discovered. At some point you will get to the point where you can accomplish the high value automation tasks that you need. (for me is was mastering regular expressions then I could automate any task that was worth doing). After you hit that wall you can either spend more time on CCIE ish stuff or you may find that AWS or some other thing. While I have been a CCIE approaching 20 years, I still study technology (I have 4 VMware certs for example). You are doing the right thing, go where your interests take you, you will get more done and like it more.
Fred P. Baker CCIE#3555

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By: Christian Adell

Christian Adell — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 06:06:57 +0000

Hi Phil,

I found myself in the same crossroad two years ago and I decided to play hard and move to a project/company which has not any physical network device, everything is virtual and leverages in Public Cloud infrastructures.
During these 2 years I’ve learned Coding Python (not only scripting, full development with testing, etc.), Virtualization/Containers, Linux Kernel, Continuous Integration and Deployment, Immutable Infrastructure and Networking related to upper layers.
My network background is still needed to build global network solutions over hybrid scenarios and create the best architectures over dynamic infrastructure, but I’ve to admit that extending my scope has become really enjoyable! (and I’m also consuming CCIE material even I don’t want to become CCIE certified)
So, go for it!

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