Good read

[Nerm]

I came across this post this morning and thought it was a good read. I am curious to see how some of you feel in regards to what the author is saying.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-rfc1925-amendment-may-impact-future-industry-terry-jenkins

[SofaKing]

This was an excellent read.  I myself am guilty of trying to learn something just so I can meet the business needs and at the end walk away not actually understanding why it works the way it does.  This is a reminder to take a step back and not only have an understanding on how to implement something but also have an understanding on the 'why' it works.  This does become difficult when your team is short staffed and the business needs/demands have increased.

I also believe this is a problem with the state of our education(at least in t he USA).  It is all about teaching to a test so your school will still receive state funding.  My wife taught high school science for seven years before becoming a veterinarian.  She was approached several times by the principal telling her that she can't ask the types of questions she was on her test.  The questions that were of 'question' were always ones that needed more than simple regurgitation and actually made the student think.

*edit* I especially loved this quote from the article, "Engineers do not create revenue for the business themselves, they enable others to create revenue more efficiently."

[deanwebb]

Great read, indeed! Thanks, Nerm! Now for the discussion...

I also read his CCIE-Written rant and the state of the CCIE program. It's clear that he shares the philosophy with the active, core members of this board. Namely, KNOW. YOUR. STUFF. This requires a great deal of wanting to investigate something that isn't a closed system with a stated end-goal. We do not start at step one and then have a finished network by the time we are at step 6337. We wake up one day and ask, "Gee, I wonder what I need to do to distribute a static route that is only up for part of the day so that it's not used when it's down, but always used when it's up?" and then plow into the answer, wherever it may lead. Or stuff like that.

Or, in other words, if you're not apologizing to someone for something you did that was experimental at least once every other week, you're not doing enough engineering.

[Ironman]

Thanks for sharing that post! Great read in my opinion. It's tough to constantly push yourself to dig deeper into technologies even after you have solved the problem. We work in a break/fix type of world where once an issue is fixed aka fire put out, we move onto the next one. I am finally at a new job/company where I can take a step back and do more investigative work and redesign according to the company needs. It is very refreshing and eye opening.

[Otanx]

He makes very good points in that article. If you interview for openings you will see a lot of the "I can fix the problem, but I don't know why this fixes it" types out there. This is going on outside of networking as well. I sat in on some Linux interviews, and candidates could add a user from the CLI, but when asked to do something like hard set the UID they didn't know how, and worse didn't know how to use man pages to figure it out. A two hour hands on interview turns into a two hour class on how to use man, and how users/groups work. Maybe they can keep some of that knowledge, and it will help them on their next interview. These are people who either call themselves engineers, or at least want to move into an engineering position, but don't have the drive to learn about how stuff works.

Sometimes I feel bad that I spend a lot of time at work reading forums, blog posts, and documentation instead of configuring gear. However, when something I configured breaks I remember that all that "wasted" time reading just allowed me to fix the problem in 10 minutes because I already understood what was going on. That monkey with a hammer that calls themselves an engineer will need to spend time learning the technology so they can figure out what is wrong, take an extra hour, and maybe break something else while they keep trying random stuff to fix the issue.

-Otanx

[deanwebb]

Exactly. We read, we probe, and stuff like that leads to mastery of our gear.

[NetworkGroover]

I am finally at a new job/company where I can take a step back and do more investigative work and redesign according to the company needs. It is very refreshing and eye opening.

I am sorely starting to miss those days... now it's like I never have time... and with two kids I just move from my primary job to the secondary job of being a Dad.  After that, honestly, not a lot of interest/motivation to tinker/blog/read anymore.. I'm just tired.. haha.

I need to start pursuing a career in management. ;P