It's a Network Thing... They Don't Understand...

[Nerm]

Reading this actually makes me pretty thankful for the helpdesk people we have at my current gig.

[deanwebb]

Sounds like Jacob would profit from talking to a manager... and if that's already been done, then it may be that they're just waiting for the contract to expire before giving this vendor the heave-ho.

[jason.copas]

Under the new contract we will all work under the same contract/vendor.  And what will be our site lead is as fed up with them as I am.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[wintermute000]

Seriously, 90% of this kind of headache can be resolved by not doing an Operations role.

I know a lot of you guys are in this boat and its not always easy (in real life with mortgages and kids etc.) to change jobs but I'm of the opinion that once you've earned your stripes and your fair share of 2AM war stories its time to move on -  just keep looking for anything design/project focused.

Frankly speaking, one of my rules now is no Operations jobs, never again (unless its facebook or some other special cutting edge SDN snowflake, but not the alleged AWS deathmarch (or is that old news now), and being in Oz fat chance anyway LOL). Life's too short to clean up after muppets and be under-appreciated into the bargain.

The second (job) rule I have is that the network / act of net-eng needs to be a profit centre not a cost centre. Amazing how different management views the engineers if they're billing straight to the bottom line or building the thing that generates all the revenue vs some kind of cost that surely we can massively cut by employing a bunch of dirty elbonians. Maybe if its some kind of global mega-corp you could bend this rule, but even then it would weigh heavily in my estimation.

[LynK]

@winter

Implementation jobs also come with their headaches. A few of them include, not being given all the information for a project scope, project creep, and even after you implement you get endless calls because x, y, or z no longer works and it is because of equipment A that you implemented. Fix it all or the company doesn't get paid.

[deanwebb]

Winter and Lynk bring up some very important points to consider. Jason does, too. What's most important is that we've all got to find what we're comfortable with.

At Global Megacorp, I get to watch as we rake vendors over coals, I see vendors in a knife-fight over who gets a contract, and I see emails every day from sales guys trying to work dat hustle... as I'm on the 2AM escalation call as I discover that this has been an issue for the last 2 and a half months and suddenly NOW it's a firewall problem?

Winter's last point is what I want to address: yes, there is some bending in Global Megacorp. Some. We've had no issue in hiring staff in Eastern Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. No more staff in Western Europe and it's very difficult getting clearance to get a guy hired in the USA, but it can still be done. Networks are still a cost center, even if we can show our value in bill-back charges. It's the widget makers that have the final say, which is why I've been in my role for three+ years and we are STILL waiting for one location to take an outage to switch out some gear. We've been trying to get them to upgrade since December 2013... but the gear that is there works, and the staff there have lots of other maintenance tasks to do, so they can't handle the upgrade and there's no travel budget this year, so... no upgrade this year, either.

Great health benefits, compensation has been appropriate so far, and I work with some great people. Didn't get approval for RSA, training so far has been for vendor products I'm working with, not anything in general theory or practice. *That* stuff I have to go get on my own, same for if I want to go after a CISSP.

If I went to another global megacorp, good years mean travel and training, bad years pretty much what I have now, so it's a wash. Once we get into some new product launches, we'll have another good year, money flows, people become the most important resource blah blah blah once again. The only big difference would be in how far I drive and who I work with.

If I went to a VAR, I'd be hella billable... and there would be the firehose of certs and training to keep up with. Travel and training, for sure, but lots of that travel is to client sites. And if clients are totally screwed up, too bad. That's now my fault, if it jeopardizes the project. More money, but with a smaller firm, the health and retirement benefits are smaller. It's overall more compensation and the stresses are different, but still there.

How about a vendor? If an SE, it's about closing the deals and moving that product. Post-sales/TAM is about keeping the product renewed and finding ways to upsell and being a mule to beat when it doesn't work right. Some of those guys have been on the 2AM calls with me.

What about management, then? I'm kind of already doing that now, with directing other guys to help me do what I'm doing. But I don't play golf, I don't like drinking a lot, I wonder if I'd be able to fit in with the social aspect of the role. My brother tried to do that at one place, made some suggestions, everyone looked at him like he was a leprechaun doing a hip-hop routine on the kitchen table, and he got canned after just a few months there. He's now a senior consultant (also a programmer) and is enjoying his current role. He gets in, gets stuff done, gets billed, gets to the next gig.

In all that consideration, if things went south at my job, I'd probably consider most going in as an SE for one of the vendor products I work with. I enjoy them, I really appreciate the tech support I've gotten for them, and I see their value and know how to unlock it. That enables me to push the sale. I can't sell just anything, but I can sell what I can be confident in. I see the headaches the SEs have to deal with - I know I create some of those, myself - and they look like the kinds of headaches I'm good at working through.

But for now, I feel like I have a good balance. It could be better, and I'm hoping we get another guy here in the USA very soon. I'm ready to re-evaluate in March, though.

[wintermute000]

@winter

Implementation jobs also come with their headaches. A few of them include, not being given all the information for a project scope, project creep, and even after you implement you get endless calls because x, y, or z no longer works and it is because of equipment A that you implemented. Fix it all or the company doesn't get paid.

At least you're in the game and directly determine the outcome. In Ops you just get handed someone else's turd sandwich and told to do great things with it.

Also with larger VAR/consultancies you are protected to a large extent as long as you follow the methodology and get signoffs at every turn, also, there's usually enough management/process layers to make sure that it is done correctly and no individual has to be left holding the bag. Covering your backside starts becoming second nature after awhile (in a good way as in getting people to agree to things in writing!!!). e.g. scope creep - if you did your statement of works correctly then it shoudl be clear what is a variation and what is not - either the sales guy eats it in margin for brownie points, or you issue a variation, either way it takes as long as it takes.

Deanwebb, in my line of work, pretty much 90% of people leaving go straight to vendor-land, esp. as its usually a nudge nudge wink wink arrangement with one of our gold/platinum partners.

[LynK]

Deanwebb, in my line of work, pretty much 90% of people leaving go straight to vendor-land

This is the truth. I know a lot of friends of mine who worked with VARs, they liked it but vendor land is VERY cushy. So off they went.

[deanwebb]

Deanwebb, in my line of work, pretty much 90% of people leaving go straight to vendor-land

This is the truth. I know a lot of friends of mine who worked with VARs, they liked it but vendor land is VERY cushy. So off they went.

My former team lead went to a vendor as an SE. He's smiling, for sure. Every day, he's smiling.

[NetworkGroover]

Deanwebb, in my line of work, pretty much 90% of people leaving go straight to vendor-land

This is the truth. I know a lot of friends of mine who worked with VARs, they liked it but vendor land is VERY cushy. So off they went.

My former team lead went to a vendor as an SE. He's smiling, for sure. Every day, he's smiling.

I know I am... 

[deanwebb]

I know I am... 

Lol... for sure, I want to finish a successful implementation of $VENDOR at Global Megacorp before sailing off to work for $VENDOR. If I can say not just "Sure, it's scalable!" but, "Scalable? I made it work for Global Megacorp in over 200 sites, with over 150,000 employees. Sure, it's scalable!" that's the kind of thing that managers, executives, and board members want to be able to hear.

I feel that if I bail and go to $VENDOR now, it could mess up their relation with Global Megacorp, and that wouldn't be good for my career path with either Global Megacorp or $VENDOR.

[wintermute000]

You'd want an under the table agreement first between your employer and vendor. That's how most of these things go down.

[deanwebb]

You'd want an under the table agreement first between your employer and vendor. That's how most of these things go down.

Duly noted... which does one generally initiate the discussion of such with? The vendor or the employer?

[wintermute000]

TBH I'm not entirely sure. I think usually the vendor puts the feelers out after sounding out the individual. With these kinds of things, we're talking Gold/Platinum partners etc. so both mgt and sales teams are very close and have usually worked together for years and done millions of $$$ of deals together so its typically an organic process.

This is esp true because you can usually see it coming a million miles away e.g. hey surprise, the guy that's done nothing but Fortinet installs for the last 4 years has gone to... Fortinet. etc.

So you can see that in this kind of situation it makes sense to keep everyone on-board. The channel is extremely incestuous

[deanwebb]

That's what I thought. Thanks.