The Problems of A Company of a Certain Size...

[deanwebb]

EMPLOYMENT After screwups

Micro:  you fire yourself and your company goes out of business

Small:  The guy doing the "computers" gets fired, and someone else in the group "assumes the responsibility"

Medium: The network manager keeps his job, the grunt doing all the heavy lifting gets fired

Large: The entire team gets fired and is replaced with outsourced contractors   


LoL, I tried....

Wait, what, are you on the market now?

I'm fine, just LOL at my meager attempt to be on topic.

Whew. You did fine with your post, by the way.

[icecream-guy]

Here's another


Need computer accessories???

Micro:  you go out and buy it yourself

Small: you scavenge what you need from around the office, if you can't find it you're SoL or go out and buy it yourself

Medium: you go out and buy it yourself and submit for reimbursement

Large:  you submit the request with 3 quotes from 3 different vendors to your manager for approval, who in turn submits to procurement, if approved, the order is placed,  you get your order in 60-90 days.


BTW I came up with this because I scavenged a keyboard off a spare parts cart,  my keys have letters now.. 

[deanwebb]

Career progression...

Small company: You curse and holler about how you have to do EVERYTHING. You wish you could focus on just one area.

Medium company: You focus on just one area, but you curse and holler about how you have to do EVERYTHING in that area. You wish you could focus on just one product. You have fond memories of all the fun you had working in the small company.

Large company: You focus on just one product, but you curse and holler about how you have to do EVERYTHING with that product. You wish your career wasn't locked to that product. You have fond memories of all the great times at those small and medium companies.

Consultancy: You focus on ALL the products, but you curse and holler about having to maintain over 70 certifications for your job. You wish your career didn't require you to be an expert in everything. You have fond memories of how much you enjoyed working at the small, medium, and large companies.

SE for a Major Vendor: You focus on a range of products, but you curse and holler about all the trade shows that you have to attend. You wish your career wasn't tied to a quarterly sales report. You wish for the days you worked as a consultant, along with those hazy, crazy days in the small, medium, and large companies.

Non-IT Role: You wonder why in the hell you left your career in IT.

[NetworkGroover]

Career progression...

Small company: You curse and holler about how you have to do EVERYTHING. You wish you could focus on just one area.

Medium company: You focus on just one area, but you curse and holler about how you have to do EVERYTHING in that area. You wish you could focus on just one product. You have fond memories of all the fun you had working in the small company.

Large company: You focus on just one product, but you curse and holler about how you have to do EVERYTHING with that product. You wish your career wasn't locked to that product. You have fond memories of all the great times at those small and medium companies.

Consultancy: You focus on ALL the products, but you curse and holler about having to maintain over 70 certifications for your job. You wish your career didn't require you to be an expert in everything. You have fond memories of how much you enjoyed working at the small, medium, and large companies.

SE for a Major Vendor: You focus on a range of products, but you curse and holler about all the trade shows that you have to attend. You wish your career wasn't tied to a quarterly sales report. You wish for the days you worked as a consultant, along with those hazy, crazy days in the small, medium, and large companies.

Non-IT Role: You wonder why in the hell you left your career in IT.

Haha... a lot of truth in there... though you could mix some elements of being a consultant and SE.. you could walk into one environment doing OpenStack one day, HPC the next, Big Data the next, simple L2 deploy the next, L3 w/VXLAN the next, network monitoring w/TapAgg the next... and you're always supposed to be expert on all occasions.

[NetworkGroover]

my keys have letters now.. 

Lol... just this phrase is epic.... 

[wintermute000]

Consultancy: You focus on ALL the products, but you curse and holler about having to maintain over 70 certifications for your job. You wish your career didn't require you to be an expert in everything. You have fond memories of how much you enjoyed working at the small, medium, and large companies.

Nailed the first part, would never go back to the second part LOL (except for maybe a telco or cloud provider etc.). Unless the network IS the business (i.e. you are a profit centre, not a cost centre), you're always going to be fighting a rearguard action. I wouldn't swap my current role for anything else I've ever done previously, despite the cert treadmill/pretend to be master of everything requirements.
You'd be surprised at how easy it is to pull off the latter if you have enough general XP, your customers generally know so little that compared to them you might as well be master of everything. I'm not going to incriminate myself but OMG some of the stuff I've seen on the customer side boggles the mind, even the ones with the money to buy Nexus and ASRs (in fact the ones with money can be worse than the ones that are just cheap and cheerful)

[Nerm]

Consultancy: You focus on ALL the products, but you curse and holler about having to maintain over 70 certifications for your job. You wish your career didn't require you to be an expert in everything. You have fond memories of how much you enjoyed working at the small, medium, and large companies.

Nailed the first part, would never go back to the second part LOL (except for maybe a telco or cloud provider etc.). Unless the network IS the business (i.e. you are a profit centre, not a cost centre), you're always going to be fighting a rearguard action. I wouldn't swap my current role for anything else I've ever done previously, despite the cert treadmill/pretend to be master of everything requirements.
You'd be surprised at how easy it is to pull off the latter if you have enough general XP, your customers generally know so little that compared to them you might as well be master of everything. I'm not going to incriminate myself but OMG some of the stuff I've seen on the customer side boggles the mind, even the ones with the money to buy Nexus and ASRs (in fact the ones with money can be worse than the ones that are just cheap and cheerful)

Have to agree as someone that has spent almost my entire career in consultancy.

[Nerm]

Wiring of new network infrastructure.

Small company: Sr. Engineer designing the network is the same guy crawling in rafters and climbing ladders to run cable.

Medium company: Sr. Engineer designing network tells Jr. tech/engineer where he wants the cable ran.

Large company: (someone else will have to fill this in as I have no experience working for a large company)

Consultancy: Sr. Engineer designing network tells in-house techs where he wants the cable ran. The Sr. Engineer then has to come back and redo half of it because the in-house techs didn't listen, terminated poorly, and didn't test anything.

[deanwebb]

Wiring of new network infrastructure.

Small company: Sr. Engineer designing the network is the same guy crawling in rafters and climbing ladders to run cable.

Medium company: Sr. Engineer designing network tells Jr. tech/engineer where he wants the cable ran.

Large company: (someone else will have to fill this in as I have no experience working for a large company)

Consultancy: Sr. Engineer designing network tells in-house techs where he wants the cable ran. The Sr. Engineer then has to come back and redo half of it because the in-house techs didn't listen, terminated poorly, and didn't test anything.

Add to medium company: Sr. Engineer checks work of Jr. Engineer, makes a few corrections, they go out to lunch after a job well done.

Large company: Architect does the design, Sr. Engineer prepares to implement design when facilities rejects it, Architect re-does design, Sr. Engineer points out how, while that is compliant with facilities' request, it's going to cause problems with the existing infrastructure, Architect pulls rank and gets his manager to apply pressure, Sr. Engineer pulls rank and gets HIS manager to apply pressure, the IT Director over networking has to call a workshop so everyone can hash things out, after a week they come to an agreement... which facilities again rejects, so there has to be another workshop which results in a plan that nobody likes but everyone can agree to.

Sr. Engineer and Jr. Engineer draw up all the Visios to show the low-level designs and distribute them to the outsourced techs that do the installations. Hilarity ensues when the techs show up, but all the gear is still over in the purchasing warehouse, so the techs have to be rescheduled for a week later. In the meantime, there's a new guy over facilities who wonders why the heck didn't we use the Sr. Engineer's first design, as it's better than anything the Architect came up with or the horrible plan that came out of the last workshop. Techs are postponed as another workshop is called in which the Architect tries to derail everything, the Sr. Engineer nearly quits, and the new facilities guy nearly loses his job. (Last In, First Out, remember!) The new, new plan looks a lot like the compromise plan, but with some stuff in it from the Sr. Engineer's suggestions, even if it's not a full implementation of said suggestions.

New equipment is ordered and the techs re-scheduled and the installation begins. In the course of installation, the techs report that it's impossible to do things according to the new plan, so the installation is put on hold while the Sr. Engineer and the Jr. Engineers head down to the site to look things over. After a Jr. Engineer notices that the techs are holding the diagrams upside-down, the installation is able to continue through to completion.

However, after it's all done, a Jr. Engineer notices a mistake and then raises a ticket through the Sr. Engineer to contact the facilities people to send out a team to make the corrections. Said team can't see what's wrong, so the Sr. Engineer and the Jr. Engineer drive out to the site, find the cables in the wrong ports, and fix them under the watchful auspices of the data center facilities team.

The engineers leave work early that day, with absolutely no feelings of guilt, whatsoever.

[Nerm]

Wow Dean that sounds like a very specific "hits home" kind of story. 

[deanwebb]

Wow Dean that sounds like a very specific "hits home" kind of story. 

It combines elements of other large company experiences that I or an associate of mine may have experienced. Any resemblance, etc., is purely coincidental.

[deanwebb]

COORDINATION OF MAJOR PROJECTS:

Small - only coordination needed is when you tell the users which weekends the network or certain servers will be down.

Medium - you all work in the same office, so when you mention how your project will require SNMP RW access to the switches, the guy in charge of doing the VTY ACL project, who happened to overhear you as you made that mention because he works in the cube next to you, makes a note to add your devices to the ACL.

Large - you coordinate projects if/when one project implementation breaks another project's implementation. Otherwise, the right hand never knows what the left hand is doing.

[Nerm]

Dealing with in-house IT as a consultant. (Yes this is more of a rant of recent events lol)

Small Company: If they even have any in-house IT they typically don't have enough knowledge to pass the A+ exam. I am normally there to fix their mistakes and they rarely have the budget to have things done right.

Medium Company: They never have enough in-house IT personnel to meet their needs. Always needing/wanting more technology solutions than they can/want to afford.

Large Company: Normally when the boss brings in a consultant the in-house IT feel insulted and have no interest in collaborating with you on the project at hand. (This of course can happen at any company size but I tend to run into it more in the "larger" category)

[deanwebb]

Dealing with in-house IT as a consultant. (Yes this is more of a rant of recent events lol)

Small Company: If they even have any in-house IT they typically don't have enough knowledge to pass the A+ exam. I am normally there to fix their mistakes and they rarely have the budget to have things done right.

Medium Company: They never have enough in-house IT personnel to meet their needs. Always needing/wanting more technology solutions than they can/want to afford.

Large Company: Normally when the boss brings in a consultant the in-house IT feel insulted and have no interest in collaborating with you on the project at hand. (This of course can happen at any company size but I tend to run into it more in the "larger" category)

Really large company: Numerous consultants are brought in, from different vendors, and turf wars result as project managers argue over what is and isn't in their statements of work.

[deanwebb]

Working Remotely...

Small company: Hey, we need you here, buddy. 24/7. We only let you go home to sleep some of the time because the law requires us to do so.

Medium company: You can work an extra hour every day in exchange for every other Friday off, how about that? But we need you here, pal.

Large company: Work remotely? That's a security risk we can't afford to take. Besides, how would we be able to verify that you're wearing a tie if you're at home?

Multinationally huge company: Work from wherever, we really have no way to tell. As long as stuff gets done, we don't care if you're working from inside a Bangkok crack house.