Imposter syndrome can be defined as the persistent feeling that we don’t deserve our accomplishments and are, in effect, frauds waiting to be discovered. In the networking community this is prevalent inasmuch as the blogs, podcasts, and private conversations I’ve had would suggest.

In the tech field, imposter syndrome often manifests itself with feeling you’re not at the technical level of those around you and therefore don’t deserve to be in your position. This might be within the hierarchy at work, in a customer meeting, or in the various tech communities we belong to.

My own dealings with imposter syndrome started that way. Early in my networking career I found myself lost in meetings or without something meaningful to contribute at events, yet for some odd reason my colleagues still wanted me there.

The feeling of being discovered a fraud was almost palpable.

However, I’ve realized that the reasons I experience imposter syndrome today are different. You see, I finally feel very comfortable in technical conversations about complex routing designs, data center networking, and various emerging technologies.

It’s not that I’ve reached the pinnacle of technical proficiency – far from it. But for whatever reason, not being the best engineer in a hundred mile radius just doesn’t bother me anymore.

So why do I still deal with imposter syndrome from time-to-time? There are two aspects about my career that gnaw at me once in a while.

First, I’m a career changer.

I know it might sound ridiculous that this would contribute to feelings of being a fraud, but hear me out.

I don’t have a degree in computer science, and I wasn’t even remotely interested in computers (let alone networking) as a child or young adult. I was a traditional classroom teacher (high school English) for several years before I realized I was bored and had little hope to increase my income significantly.

I chose to get into IT as an adult for very practical reasons, and as I started to climb the ladder of engineering positions, I felt behind everyone close to my age. For example, I was 28 or 29 when I started my first helpdesk job, the age many of my friends in the community were well-underway in building their careers and getting high level certifications.

To be fair, this has motivated me tremendously, but it has also left me feeling constantly behind – a feeling that persists today. Sometimes I have a sense of being a second-tier engineer because I changed careers as a young adult and still have to catch up. In a sense, I don’t feel like a “real” engineer.

Illogical? You bet. Ridiculous? I agree. Nevertheless, the thought pops into my non-Vulcan brain enough that I felt compelled to write about it.

Second, I don’t have a CCIE.

There’s a part of me that believes that I’m a second-tier engineer because I have only a CCNP and no CCIE numbers after my name. This begs the question of what in the world “first” and “second” tier engineers are, but that only supports the notion that my thinking is pretty illogical.

Though I don’t have a CCIE, I work at a reasonably high level in my dayjob and interact with CCIEs in the networking community all the time. In that sense, my daily activities are a constant reminder that there are two classes of network engineers: those with a CCIE, and those without.

Is that really true? No, I don’t intellectually believe that. But do I still think that anyway once in a while? Yep.

I’ve built a great career, earn a decent living, and get to participate in a very public way in the networking community. I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had in spite of not having a CCIE.

So do I believe I need a CCIE to be successful? Nope. But do I still feel that weird sense of being second-rate for not having one? Yes, sometimes I do.

My own thinking contradicts itself more than I care to admit.

I’ve always equated imposter syndrome to feelings of technical deficiency, so it was a revelation to me when I realized the latest pangs I was experiencing were related to something else. Maybe that’s the first step in dealing with it.

I don’t have a neat and tidy conclusion for you, or for myself for that matter, other than to say that imposter syndrome is pretty illogical. However, it doesn’t make it any less impactful on us.

I have yet to completely give myself over to pure Spock-like logical thinking, and until I do, I expect imposter syndrome will persist to one extent or another and manifest itself differently as I change as a person.

We are much more complex than a clever tweet or a mathematical formula suggests. Inside all of us are jumbles of thoughts, emotions, and contradictions swirling around like so much paint.

In the words of Walt Whitman,

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Thanks,

Phil

I believe a networking professional, whether in pre-sales or working in the field, should have a deep understanding of networking concepts and strong technical experience. But also important are the soft skills necessary to build trust with customers, encourage strong relationships with account managers, and develop camaraderie and collaboration among teams. The words “not my problem” undermine those relationships and therefore shouldn’t be on the lips of a networking professional, let alone any sort of professional.

When I’m working with a customer, I’m often asked to take a look at some issue not related to my project. More than once I’ve had a customer at his wits end struggling with some unrelated issue desperate for advice.

Sometimes the person coming to me is a co-worker on another team. It could be a pre-sales engineer asking me to look over a design for a project to which I’m not assigned. Maybe it’s a project manager asking for help on a project for which the engineer just quit.

The cavalier words “not my problem”, or any comparable phrase with the same sentiment, shouldn’t be my first reaction. Though it may technically not be my problem, expressing that sentiment can be interpreted as aggressive, callous, and in my opinion, unprofessional.

This is true in any relationship such as with the sales team, with project managers, with pre-sales engineers, with the warehouse team, and even with the lowly intern. It also includes relationships to the customer – whether that be the C-level individual signing the purchase agreement or the meek Network Analyst assigned to help me on the project.

Instead of a callous “not my problem”, why not make it my problem? That doesn’t always mean taking complete ownership of the issue, but it can mean offering a helping hand or pointing someone in the right direction.

I understand that sometimes we just can’t help at that moment, and it really could be completely outside our purview to do so. But that doesn’t preclude us from being kind to others as professionals and decent human beings. Doing otherwise hurts relationships which in turn hurts ourselves in the long run.

Here’s a quote from a silly movie:

“…good manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn’t know that, I thought it was just a way of acting all superior. Oh and you know what else he told me?…I know, I mean I thought a “gentleman” was somebody that owned horses. But it turns out, his short and simple definition of a lady or a gentleman is, someone who always tries to make sure the people around him or her are as comfortable as possible.” (Blast From the Past, 1999)

Yes, it’s a silly movie and doesn’t serve as my moral guide in life; however, I thought these few lines captured the spirit of professionalism pretty well. I can’t solve everyone’s problem, and sometimes it really is so far outside the scope of work that I’m obligated to politely decline. But inasmuch as I’m able and is appropriate, when someone asks me for help in a work context, the decent thing to do is to try – try to help or try find someone who can.

To me, saying “not my problem” when someone needs help is unprofessional and indecent. Instead, remember that people are more than line items in statements of work.

Thanks,

Phil

For my very last class, I chose not to cover anything in the textbook or any of the bullets on the syllabus. Instead, I introduced my students to systems and network automation. What may seem old news to you and me was brand-new to my class, and I don’t believe this is the exception.

There is a huge  gap between what’s happening in classrooms and in real-world IT, and colleges aren’t preparing students effectively.

I believe the history of technology is important to learn, and I believe understanding foundational concepts is also critical. However, these elements need to be taught within the context of what’s happening in information technology right now. This way, even obscure computer science principles become relevant to the actual work a student can expect to perform in their career.

I know there are exceptions, of course. Students that plan to build careers in pure research should stay focused more on deep concepts and less on how to create a new VM in ESXi. But the majority of young people graduating colleges with two and four year IT-related degrees are getting jobs as sysadmins, network engineers, developers, help desk analysts, and so on. Knowing the foundational principles is certainly important, but does it also prepare them to configure a core switch or create new storage for the applications team?

Some two and four year schools advertise degree programs in network administration, cybersecurity, etc, in what I assume is an effort to provide a more relevant education. Some advertise they utilize the Cisco Networking Academy and Microsoft Online Labs.  But after working in the trenches in some of these programs, I don’t think they are nearly as relevant as schools think they are. And frankly, I believe this is doing a disservice to tuition-paying students.

During my last class, I gave students an overview of systems automation and introduced things like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and Powershell. We discussed the difference between on-box and off-box management. We talked about what programming languages they should learn on their own, the importance of getting familiar with navigating a Linux file system, and what changes are going on in the industry today.

None of my students knew what the “cloud” was. None knew any programming languages other than the little bit of C++ and Java they learned earlier that semester. None had any idea about virtualization, a 20 year-old technology.

There’s a big gap between what’s being taught and what employers are looking for, and I believe teachers and those who write curricula are the ones to address the issue head on. Administrators have no clue about what’s going on in our industry, and college advisers at best have only a cursory knowledge of what a hiring manager wants to see on a resume.

Colleges need to hire teachers with solid industry experience. They need to prefer adjuncts that are working in the field right now, and then pay them enough to keep them around. Curricula needs to be modified, or in many cases just thrown out. As much as possible, a course’s curriculum should reflect what’s going on in the industry. As budget allows, labs need to be built, and industry news publications need to be part of the course reading list.

This may not be applicable to many departments at a typical college, but it’s vital in IT. Our field lives and breathes change, and it doesn’t need a new generation of job candidates that have months of experience configuring VTP but little else.

For me, it’s not about explaining DNS, OSPF, or what a hypervisor is. It’s much more about helping bridge the gap between someone learning these things for the first time and making the leap to a productive member of an IT department. Sure, that means memorizing well-known ports and learning about data structures, but it also means discussing DevOps, cloud computing, containers, or whatever technology is immediately relevant.

I left my teaching position for several personal reasons, but I hope to get back there one day. I love being in the classroom, and I love working with young people starting their own career journeys.

A real joy for me was making every three hour evening class as relevant and meaningful as possible, and sometimes that meant abandoning the five-year-old textbook and reviewing a recent blog article instead.

Thanks,

Phil

What I’ve learned is that there’s incredible value in actually engaging with whatever community is relevant to you. Yes, there’s value in passively consuming content, but actually participating in the community has impacted my life and career much more than any sort of passive interaction.

I use the term “community” loosely, perhaps more loosely than other bloggers. I see the community as fluid and dynamic – always changing and adjusting. Remember that the community of network engineers is actually a vaguely connected group of actual people which means there are introverts, extroverts, people my age, people much older and younger, some total jerks, and some amazing souls I wish I could be neighbors with.

In other words, it’s complex just like any group of people.

For several months you may find several voices more dominant than others, and after a while they may fade into the background as others engage more and produce more content. There are small circles, large circles, technology-specific groups, and plenty of overlap.

The community is not a fixed entity but is a dynamic ebb and flow of people.

I believe it’s very important to participate regularly at least in small ways. Maybe that means tweeting about networking from time to time, or perhaps that means finally buckling down and getting that blog post out there. Regardless of how you participate, I believe the value is tremendously greater to be an active part of the community rather than a passive one.

For me, this translates to getting a blog out once in a while and tweeting about networking a couple times a day. Because of the trials and tribulations of life, the level of my participation ebbs and flows as well, but I look at this as part of my career which likely has several decades left. In that sense, I can tolerate an ebb and flow so long as over the long term I participate from time to time to provide something meaningful to others.

I don’t believe there are any rules, either. If you’re reluctant to write, tweet, record videos, or speak, remember that many of the influencers creating all our favorite blogs and videos are out there cranking out network projects just like any other engineer. Your experiences are likely similar in many ways, and your contribution to the community is therefore just as valuable. In fact, I know many influencers who are influencers only because their jobs are so slow they have the time to write and create content.

If you’ve never participated, your voice still counts, and I want to hear it.

Too many times I’ve googled something for a project only to find an incredibly helpful blog post from someone I’ve never heard of and who rarely posts articles. Even if you’re not operating daily at a senior level, I promise you have something meaningful that we can all learn from. And after you take those first few steps of participating in the community, in your own way, in your own time, you’ll also find that in addition to helping others, you’ll actually learn so much as well.

Just after the new year in 2018, I struggled with a Cisco ISE project to the extent that I stayed up hours and hours reading blogs and watching YouTube videos to figure out how to get through my technical roadblocks. The next day I remembered my friend, Mike Zsiga (more commonly known as Zig), was extremely proficient with setting up ISE in even very complex environments.

I met Zig through online communities, and we stayed in touch despite the ebb and flow of both our lives. I sent him a note asking for help to which he responded almost immediately. Zig got on a Webex with me while he was in a hotel somewhere and walked through the configuration with me for hours – I think until after midnight if I remember correctly.

This is an example of how participating in the community has helped me directly in a very tangible way. Sure, I can learn a bunch reading blog posts and watching videos, but because of Zig’s and my participation in the networking community, we were able to develop enough of a nerdy relationship that my project was successful.

I’ve also met some folks that I’d never be friends with. This is the reality of any community that’s made up of actual human beings. Yes, there are some jerks, but they are very few and easy to spot and strategically ignore.

The great majority of people I’ve interacted with are fantastic and willing to help at the drop of a hat. But remember that the community isn’t all about you. Just as much as there are people willing to help you in your networking journey, you can be a help to others as well. Even one blog post about some entry-level technology will find it’s way to someone’s desktop, somewhere in the world, in the middle of a cutover.

Engage on twitter. Start a blog and try to stay somewhat consistent. Don’t worry about following any rules about how to engage, and remember that even if you’re a level 1 helpdesk technician, you almost certainly have something valuable we can all learn from.

And in the end, after we’ve completed our projects under budget, after all the right prefixes are being learned by the right routers, and after all end-users can authenticate to their shiny new wireless network through ISE, you also gain a bunch of new friends.

And coming from someone who works alone from home most of the time, that may be one of the best benefits of all.

Thanks,

Phil

After that, I kept going back to tweak it. Then, instead of moving on to the next task, I looked for things I could do that required I write another script. I became kind of hooked on getting better writing Python. I’m still pretty bad, but I’m spending quite a bit of time every day trying to improve.

At the same time, I’ve been studying for the CCIE on and off for almost three years, in earnest for the last year. There’s very little more satisfying to a network engineer than configuring a solution, testing connectivity, and getting back !!!!!

But lately, putzing around with lines of Python code until I finally get it to run without errors has been almost equally satisfying.

The thing is, when I go to work every day I’m seeing practical examples of how knowing how to write a simple script is as helpful to me as deep networking knowledge. My experience has been that once BGP neighbors relationships are formed, OSPF adjacencies are in the Full state, and traffic takes the correct path across my WAN, I’m not wiggling those proverbial wires much any more. Instead, I find myself incorporating sysadmin skills and simple programming to get day 2 and beyond tasks done.

I don’t work for a VAR anymore, so I don’t have the opportunity to finish one big WAN project then jump to the next for a different customer. Instead I have to find a way to add value with what I have in front of me, or in other words, make the network (and network security in particular) more robust, easier to manage, and automated.

About 18 months ago I chatted with Jon Langemak about this very thing. He explained how it was difficult for him to shift from a CCIE focus to his current focus in the automation and DevOps world, but how it was needful because it was how he could add value in the context in which he worked. Basically, he looked around and identified where he could be most useful, and then he went for it. That conversation has stuck with me ever since.

I’ve reaped tremendous rewards and seen incredible opportunities as a result of earning a variety of technical certifications, most of them from Cisco. But for some reason, the opportunities that present themselves to me nowadays don’t lend themselves to going from project to project configuring ASRs or replacing switch stacks in IDFs. I’ve done that before, and a big part of me really wants to do that again. Instead, the opportunities that come my way have less to do with configuring boxes and more to do with automation, creating better workflows, and aligning technology with business.

I’m not sure what to do with all this right now. In my mind, the natural progression for a network engineer is to get the next level certification, which for me is the CCIE, and then work on bigger and more complex technical projects. I know that’s still the natural progression for many engineers out there, but it’s not what’s happening in my life right now, even though I want it to be.

I’m not commenting on the industry here, and this isn’t another blog post about how network engineering is changing. These are the observations of my personal journey with the CCIE and with my current dayjob.

So where can I add value, and what opportunities are right in front of me that will help me grow? Well, for me, that means finding ways to automate tasks, collect large amounts of information from the network, find meaning in it, and use whatever methods I can to make network devices and the security posture of my organization more stable and consistent.

It also means creating professional writing, casting long-term vision for the area I’m responsible for, and being an available resource that can speak to the overall picture of the network rather than focus on one router at a time.

Though I’m still going through CCIE labs regularly and taking breaks to re-watch an INE video on various topics, I’m also spending just as much time improving my ability to write in Python using resources like Code Academy and Learn Python the Hard Way.

This doesn’t mean that my networking knowledge is now useless. In fact, it forms the foundation for everything I’m working on. I believe that the CCIE is still extremely relevant, and many of my friends in the networking community are working on higher level networking projects daily that require that sort of knowledge. But that’s simply not what’s been happening in my life lately, no matter how much I’d like it to be or how hard I try to make it happen.

So I feel I’m at a crossroads – probably how Jon felt a few years ago. Maybe it’s more of a transition or career evolution, I really don’t know. At first, it was absolutely terrifying to confront. But now, rather than continue to kick against the goads, I’m open to what seems to be developing naturally.

Thanks,

Phil