Mentoring Advice, Part 1

I occasionally get LinkedIn or other requests for mentoring and advice.This blog collects some of my and others’ thoughts about careers and skills-building.?

I have been seeing some blog postings or comments by Daniel Dib,?David Pe?aloza Seijas,?and others with good advice and encouragement.?

I don’t mind acting like a mentor. I’m not willing to actually BE an ongoing mentor outside my employer, because of time concerns. Also, employment conditions in other countries may be very different, which could lead to me giving bad advice.?

Please be aware that any advice I give is well-meant but I may not fully understand your circumstances so the advice may not be a good fit for your needs. Also, I’m human and thus error-prone, etc.?

Goals

The first thing, to my mind, is to know your goals. For those who ask me for mentoring, the usual goal is to get a job in networking or tech. After that, the usual goal is to get a better job. Possibly in a different city or country.?

But what does “better job” mean to YOU? More pay? Less stress? Better working conditions? More paid time off? What are your life priorities, family responsibilities, time commitments? Networking work can be stressful, so work / life balance is important.?

Getting Work in the U.S.

I and I suspect many others in the U.S. have little to no idea of how someone not in the U.S. can get a job in the U.S. and get a visa. We haven’t had to deal with it.?

Large U.S. companies are probably equipped to interview, hire, and navigate visa / U.S. entry for foreign personnel. Some very large Indian firms such as Tata do that as part of staffing for U.S. firms.?

Smaller companies, like NetCraftsmen, are in general not equipped to do that.

Technical

“What should I study?” (Either when starting out, or later in a career.)

You will need to focus on whatever technology you study. If you think of it in terms of Return On Investment (ROI), you are about to invest your time. You want to get the best payoff (job, income, etc.) in return for the time you invest, with minimum wasted time.?

As far as “hot” technologies, I think Cisco and networking still needs a lot of people. Security is a hot area for sure, and can be multi-vendor. Your local job market may differ, of course.?

On the compute/cloud side: consider Amazon and maybe Azure cloud. And VMware. Those all have networking components but that is probably not the main focus of someone working in those tech areas.?

So: pick Cisco or one of the top cloud vendors. They all have books and training courses of various kinds available. Amazon free tier lets you use Amazon tutorials and free online resources for up to 1 year. (Free, with some care what you do.) Azure has a free starter account, etc. as well. I think more highly of Amazon, myself. I’ll spare you why. If Microsoft is your comfort zone, or you’ve done Windows admin, then maybe Azure will feel more comfortable to you.??

For the rest of this blog, I’m going to talk about Cisco / networking only.?

If you’re just starting in networking, you should probably focus on networking, not automation or cloud. That doesn’t apply if you want a career in servers, applications, DevOps, etc., but my focus here is networking.

Learn the basics and beyond, so you’re at least a mid-range network engineer, before tackling automation or cloud. Also be aware that a lot of cloud work is currently done by application / server people, and in many cases done without adequate networking input (in my opinion). That is, if you’re in networking, you may not get asked to help with cloud tasks. As use of cloud matures, that may change.?

Cisco Learning?https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/?is a good resource.?Certifications?are a good way to document progress and show it in your resume.?

To get started, there are the Cisco?CCT?certifications, for entry level technician jobs. Pick a focus area. And then continue with a matching?CCNA?or other associate’s certification.?

Cisco’s?Network Academy?provides relatively inexpensive training, online and at community colleges and other places around the world.?Cisco claims 2.3 million Network Academy students last year.

I recommend these because there are lots of learning resources available, including books and online Cisco and other material, to keep your costs down. There are also commercial courses of varying quality and prices. I also recommend Cisco study since that’s what the most deployed equipment is, and where you’ll find the most jobs in networking.?

As far as picking topical areas, you’ll have to decide based on two factors:

• What technical area(s) most interest you? (You’ll do a lot better learning something you find interesting.)
• What technical areas do you see the most local demand for??

Also, attempting the courses or entry level certifications is a good way to try out networking. If you find you don’t like it or learning it is painful, that’s a useful data point suggesting you study something else.?

Career Paths

I’m going to describe the pattern I see in the U.S. Career paths elsewhere probably differ, and I am not familiar with them.?

I start with the assumption that it’s always better to have an employer pay for training if possible. When you’re getting started, that’s not likely to happen. In the U.S., the usual pattern seems to be working on a CCNA before or during an entry level job, on your own time and money.?

However, once you get that starter certification, you?may?be able to find an employer (current one or a new one) who will pay or partly pay for additional training and certification tests. This may vary in different geographic regions or countries.?

If you have a job then complete say a CCNA certification, you should probably get a promotion and pay increase. If not, that might be a sign that it is time to look for a new employer.?

If you’re lucky, the employer may provide some paid time for study and tests. As your certified skills and experience grow, you will likely have more employment choices, better training benefits (perhaps), and your salary should grow.

There’s a choice after that too. You can work to get multiple CCNP level certifications and a broad skill set, or go for CCIE expert, which can take a lot of study and years to complete. Be aware that CCIE is a lot of effort and may not result in success – it’s hard!?

A small number of related CCNP or other certifications is probably good. I personally think that too many unrelated certifications is not great, because very few people remember a broad range of technical material they don’t use on the job.?

Use It or Lose It

Which is another good thought: find a job where you use your skills, or you will lose them. I’ve interviewed a CCIE x 3 who spent most of his time building / diagnosing encrypted WAN and VPN links. He wanted to be paid as a triple CCIE, but his Unified Communications and Service Provider, and even Route Switch skills had faded over time, due to lack of use.?

I’ve chosen to go with a single CCIE and broad familiarity with many other topics – enough to know my way around, but not fine points I wouldn’t remember. It’s better to have the fine points in memory and have lots of hands-on experience, but it’s rare anyone can actually do that across many technical areas in ongoing fashion. Keeping up with new technology is a full-time job in itself!

My personal conclusion (ROI opinion) has been that multiple CCIE’s might feed my ego and get me bragging rights, but would consume a lot of time/stress and have little value in my work. Whereas learning adjacent skills that might be used made more sense for me. With adjacent skills, there is a greater chance you will continue using them.?

As an example, route/switch, then Cisco SD-Access, DNAC, and especially ISE skills, is one (rather large) set of adjacent skills with current value. For that matter, I consider ISE to be a fairly big skillset, yet the last time I looked it was only part of the Cisco security certification skillsets. Which just confirms that in any of the networking areas there is a major amount of material to know!

Things to be aware of when entering networking:

• Changes to networks usually get made after hours or on weekends. If you’re looking for an 8 AM to 5 PM job, networking and IT in general may not be for you.?
• I personally think enlightened employers try to keep staff hours down around 40 hours per week, with comp time when a crisis burns extra hours. Not all employers do this. Building skills may be one way to land a job at a more enlightened employer.?
• IT work can be stressful, due to the mix of working times, and the pressure of getting things working in tight time windows. Failures happen at inconvenient times and need to be responded to as well.?
• All this is one reason compensation may be higher in IT than in other jobs. Or should be higher. If you want the big pay, you have to take what comes with it, although you can and should look for a job where the employer is aware of and tries to compensate (hours not money) for the negative aspects.?

In other countries or outside big cities, the career pattern may be different. If there are few networking jobs, then you have to plan around the limited number of employers and jobs, and perhaps choose technical areas according to employer needs rather than your own preferences. You may have to make a tough choice that to get promotion and skills growth you need to move to a new location or country.?

Conclusion

Networking is an exciting field, with lots of opportunity to build skills and have a career progression. There is some shift to cloud, but it too needs networking, just using different terms.?

Good luck!

Comments

Comments are welcome, both in agreement or constructive disagreement about the above. I enjoy hearing from readers and carrying on deeper discussion via comments. Thanks in advance!?

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