Small company? Medium company? Large company? VAR? REALLY LARGE company? Government? Vendor?
If you had your pick, where would you want to go and why?
For me, if I had to leave where I am, I would want to go with another huge company like the one I'm at because of the ability to specialize within security. My other choice would be to go with a vendor, hopefully as a SE. I like to travel, and although they can get yelled at majorly by the sales guys, it's not that much different than the yelling that goes along with other roles. Money for both is pretty dang nice.
Probably a large company, maybe government, I think I am to specialized in networking to get a good salary at a small company unless it's a contractor position where I would take care of alot of small companies.
I have been thinking about leaving where I am. Not seriously looking, but talking to friends at other companies. If one of them actually gave me an offer I would have to seriously think about it. Two places I have talked to informally I would love to work at. One is a large company in the travel industry. Hotels, and vacation properties type. International as well. This would be the same work I am doing now, but at a larger scale. The other is a smaller, but growing ISP/co-lo provider. Very heavy BGP, and MPLS vs the enterprise side I have always done. That would be interesting to see that side of the industry. The big benefit about where I am now is how stable the job is. It isn't going anywhere, and is growing. So in a few years we may be as large as the travel industry company I talked to.
-Otanx
If I were to leave my current gig which funds me with like every network and infrastructure technology out there atm I would probably go to a cloud service provider.
I treat my career like an addiction. As long as you can give me my fix Im good. I love the newest technologies and complex challenges.
The ideal company for me would be one that can provide the above but also is a company I am passionate about in my personal life. I have never worked for a company I truly care about. I do a job for them and they provide me monies and geek toys to play with. Thats pretty much it.
Examples would be:
Sr Network Architect for the NFL or NHL or NASA or Jack Daniels
Network Engineer for <large Brewery>
Network Engineer/Desktop support - Chipotle
Vendors - Cisco, Arista, Juniper, maybe an SDN startup. But those are kinda cheating...
Quote from: that1guy15 on September 22, 2015, 10:24:30 PM
I treat my career like an addiction. As long as you can give me my fix Im good. I love the newest technologies and complex challenges.
The ideal company for me would be one that can provide the above but also is a company I am passionate about in my personal life. I have never worked for a company I truly care about. I do a job for them and they provide me monies and geek toys to play with. Thats pretty much it.
Examples would be:
Sr Network Architect for the NFL or NHL or NASA or Jack Daniels
Network Engineer for <large Brewery>
Network Engineer/Desktop support - Chipotle
Vendors - Cisco, Arista, Juniper, maybe an SDN startup. But those are kinda cheating...
Why Chipotle - because you like to eat there?
+1 for startups, especially if you think they have a good shot at being successful... pre-IPO stock is the shizzle. ;)
I've finally found a company in the defense industry that I want to stick with so I will not be making any moves that aren't internal.
Doha, Qatar is my next destination (hopefully). We won a big 5-year contract supporting the AF enterprise and my aim is to get on it either as a network manager or as a tier 3 network/system administrator. I've already started studying for the required Microsoft Server certification and will have it done by the time they start seriously looking at resumes. Going in as a CCNP and MCSA Server would be a knockout punch to 90% of the competition.
The AF appears to hold IT contractors to a higher standard than the Army does, and I really appreciate that because it narrows the field with certification requirements. It also raises the pay.
My current gig has outsourced practically all of its network infrastructure, so that's one of the things I will be asking at the next interview. Really frustrating not being in control and seeing everything go up in flames.
@AspiringNetworker
Yeah pretty much. My wife loves that place so it would be a win win :)
Quote from: SimonV on September 23, 2015, 03:29:48 AM
My current gig has outsourced practically all of its network infrastructure, so that's one of the things I will be asking at the next interview. Really frustrating not being in control and seeing everything go up in flames.
THIS ^^^ QFT
Knowing the degree and extent of outsourcing is critical. Who owns engineering? Architecture? Designs? What are the operational escalation paths? Do you have access to your own equipment, or did the outsourcer lock that down, too?
VAR/integrator/consultancy. Would also consider the right SP or cloud provider role.
Big complex networks, different scenarios and topologies, cross-domain knowledge require, and you hit all the topics. Happy as a pig in mud.
No vendor lock-in for me, not even Cisco.
No single organisation lock-in for me, unless I get to write the checks and the checks are big enough for the big boy toys (so given I don't have my MBA or pointy hair, not happening anytime soon). By single organisation I mean a single enterprise org's network. Conventional enterprise R&S isn't very interesting to me. A large org may be interesting but see my second point: without enough control I would get really bored. And this feeds into...
No Operations, never, ever, and not if it was the last job on earth. This also means no MSPs, who are in the business of racing to the bottom when it comes to technical staff (i.e. workers) whilst seeing how many overpaid suits they can employ. Put it this way, if you have major incident meetings where there are 5 or 6 non-technical suits or admin / account parasites for every worker bee tech, you have a problem.
I happen to be changing right now, to consultancy at Service Provider/Government. I'll only know for sure once I'll start but I think I made the best choice.
yeah that's exactly what I'm doing. Like I said, happy as a pig in mud, though the parent service provider can really grind my gears sometimes. We were only recently bought out by them and its been a culture shock, also, a lot of our projects are now coming off their sales channel which means yay tonnes of work and 0 chance of getting benched/laid off, but its often pieces of sh-t solutions that some sales guy sold without understanding what the product actually is and we get parachuted into the middle of the sh1tstorm. Then there's the massive internal projects that seem to drag on forever without going anywhere, like world war one....
don't know if this will happen to you, but we're also used as 'the cavalry' for a lot of their customers when they can't handle something and the account is burning down, we get called in as fixers.
I really enjoy being in the consultancy/MSP market. It is like getting a new puzzle to solve every day. My next move will probably be doing the same thing I do now only for a larger company.
My ideal next gig would be working for a large web scale company that has a DevOp culture. I find myself doing less and less layer 2/3 and more layer 4-7 stuffs and liking it.
landed at a great place 6 months ago. See myself maturing here for the next 5+ years..
I've been actually thinking about this for the past few months...
First and foremost, one with no on-call responsibility (still in the networking arena). I'm getting to the point where I DON'T want my personal life invaded with after hours calls. I'm still OK with maintenance windows.
Other than that, one with various networking gear and technology and is very progressive with keeping up with technology. Perhaps one that heavily embraces "next generation networking" (e.g. SDN, automation, orchestration, programmability, blah blah blah)
Any ideas?
Consulting/professional services. The only fires you put out are the ones you start, and as you say, you don't mind planned maintenance windows.
The following is a true story..
I had to leave company A in order to get away from the location they had me in. It literally said in my personnel record that I was too valuable to transfer (flattering, but frustrating).
Company B has me working side by side with Company A personnel in the Tier II network shop. Company A now has two vacancies in said shop and wants to re-hire me. Effectively I will come to work, sit at the same desk, and do the same job, but for 30k more per year.
The irony here is that this is the job I was trying to transfer to in the first place :drama:
Quote from: config t on October 01, 2015, 06:28:16 AM
The following is a true story..
I had to leave company A in order to get away from the location they had me in. It literally said in my personnel record that I was too valuable to transfer (flattering, but frustrating).
Company B has me working side by side with Company A personnel in the Tier II network shop. Company A now has two vacancies in said shop and wants to re-hire me. Effectively I will come to work, sit at the same desk, and do the same job, but for 30k more per year.
The irony here is that this is the job I was trying to transfer to in the first place :drama:
Some companies just don't get it. :rofl:
I really hate that kind of insanity... but it's an ISO 9001 documented GxP process, so it's the BEST! WAY! to do things, right?
:printer:
Quote from: config t on October 01, 2015, 06:28:16 AM
The following is a true story..
I had to leave company A in order to get away from the location they had me in. It literally said in my personnel record that I was too valuable to transfer (flattering, but frustrating).
Company B has me working side by side with Company A personnel in the Tier II network shop. Company A now has two vacancies in said shop and wants to re-hire me. Effectively I will come to work, sit at the same desk, and do the same job, but for 30k more per year.
The irony here is that this is the job I was trying to transfer to in the first place :drama:
I'm not even surprised. This is typical in the San Diego area. I used to subcontract for AT&T and they straight up told me when I turned in my 2-week notice that they weren't surprised at all and that there's no structure in place for meaningful raises - no matter how much you improve your skillset or how valuable you are. Company policy just doesn't allow it.
HP was the prime on the contract, and several employees there did something very similar to you... hated life, couldn't get promoted, left for 6 months then came back making 30k-40k more in a new role..... lol.