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A network engineer in search of greener pastures

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Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#61

Post by the_snooze »

> I need to obtain a job that requires a clearance, and the job has to "sponsor" the application for the clearance, before I can get one. Well, this is a catch-22, since I can't obtain a job without a clearance, and I can't get a clearance without a job. Although I'm qualified for these jobs(sometimes overqualified), I can't have them, because of this paradoxical security clearance.

Most jobs that require a clearance only require you to be eligible for one. That is, you’re a US citizen and are truthful on your clearance application form. There are indeed positions that require you to have one going in, but those are few and far between. From my experience, it’s limited to highly specialized staff/principal/management openings where the company would rather hire through their networks than randos applying through an ad.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#62

Post by alephnerd »

mlinhares wrote: post #55
alephnerd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't we just buy an old PC and put it in the office and run dev builds on that It's cheaper to pay for those cloud resources than hiring 2-3 more people.

Why would you have your QA environment unlike you prod environment? Even the infra setup should be as close as possible, so you can test infra changes in QA before promoting them to prod. I can't see how it would make sense to deploy in two completely different environments that are not alike at all.

> I can't see how it would make sense to deploy in two completely different environments that are not alike at all.

Because you are not saving that much money by having multiple bespoke on-prem environments per team.

Troubleshooting, management, and security headaches grow.

It's just easier to have everyone use a pre-built and troubleshooted environment.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#63

Post by lolinder »

mlinhares wrote: post #12
pflenker wrote: post #7

Not to step on the authors toes, but it’s not the job searching that is broken - it’s the market that has shifted to favor companies and to put applicants at a disadvantage, something that hasn’t happened in the IT field for a long time. People reject candidates without a college degree because they can afford to - they still have plenty of applicants to pick from after filtering out the rest. There is no need for th…

There's that but there's also this: > However, after heading over to Y Combinator to check out startup jobs, I was again frustrated by the findings. YC Jobs has a category for Engineering, but it's all software. There's a category for Operations, but it's all CEO, CTO, management positions. After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/enginee…

> thinking seriously about pivoting careers to a devops kinda job instead

I wouldn't even necessarily consider this a career pivot, it's just a matter of them embracing the evolution of their field. Most of the other "network people" saw the writing on the wall years ago and re-titled themselves and got whatever new training and certifications were needed to use the new tools. They're a bit late to the game, but they can take the same path that tens if not hundreds of thousands have already taken.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#64

Post by neeleshs »

tguvot wrote: post #30
mlinhares wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's that but there's also this: > However, after heading over to Y Combinator to check out startup jobs, I was again frustrated by the findings. YC Jobs has a category for Engineering, but it's all software. There's a category for Operations, but it's all CEO, CTO, management positions. After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/enginee…

those "operational" jobs exists today. just not in the small startups, that still didn't figure out, that despite running in the cloud you need networking and cybersecurity people

As a startup CTO, I agree you need networking And cybersecurity. I am not sure if you need fulltime people specializing in this though.

I used to work for large companies with big on-prem footprint. Networking and security in that world is a different game and warrants dedicated people.

But for a startup with two services running in the cloud, with so many out of the box tools? (IDS, WAF, log based monitoring, SDN and all the configurability that comes with it). That can go a long way, without dedicated people.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#65

Post by stackskipton »

umvi wrote: post #42
mlinhares wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's that but there's also this: > However, after heading over to Y Combinator to check out startup jobs, I was again frustrated by the findings. YC Jobs has a category for Engineering, but it's all software. There's a category for Operations, but it's all CEO, CTO, management positions. After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/enginee…

> After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/engineer lines. How on earth are all these startups operating without a network person? You don't have someone running your server or your VPN? For smaller companies the answer is: "VPN admin is just one of many hats that a given generalist might wear" It would be very costly to pay a FTE just fo…

Yep, more cloud native companies don't need a dedicated network guy. How do I get networks and VPN? I declare them in Terraform and they pop out the other end. Done, no weird Cisco CLI commands required.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#66

Post by shortrounddev2 »

alephnerd wrote: post #57
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you had a whole server rack, you might have to hire someone for that, but if you're just running one or two servers with containers to run your dev builds, you could get that set up on K8s and manage your deployments the way you would with AWS. I don't think it would require hiring new people, an existing devops guy should be able to do that

It's still additional operational overhead for marginal RoI. If you're an organization that already has a SRE or Infra Eng hired, there's no point supporting a niche setup when every other team is using a prebuilt and troubleshooted environment. Edit: Can't reply to OP atm, but he makes a good point. For a higher margins and less commodified segment like ML Compute, on-prem computing still makes financial sense. That…

I think if all you're running is web microservices, then it's probably not worth it. But my company builds machine learning models offline and I feel that if we bought a dedicated GPU machine (literally just build one and put it in the office, not a rack mounted thing), we would save money in the long run after building a custom training pipeline

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#67

Post by mlinhares »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #60
mlinhares wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's that but there's also this: > However, after heading over to Y Combinator to check out startup jobs, I was again frustrated by the findings. YC Jobs has a category for Engineering, but it's all software. There's a category for Operations, but it's all CEO, CTO, management positions. After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/enginee…

“the people that used to cable and connect servers are not as important anymore” What an arrogant take. As someone who does this, and is also a self-taught, no-degree-having troglodyte, I am forced to completely disagree. Your cloud servers are built by people. That you don’t value those people says WAY more about you than anything else. I understand the abstraction— but that isn’t gonna matter when the PDUs are offl…

You're free do disagree, doesn't change the reality that most infrastructure will be running on monopolized data centers that need less and less people to operate.

I'm not devaluing anyone here, just stating that, as running infrastructure becomes a more and more concentrated business, there will be less jobs because the small shops/ISPs/data centers are disappearing, and what will be left will be the large cloud providers and equinixes out there.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#68

Post by silverquiet »

mlinhares wrote: post #12
pflenker wrote: post #7

Not to step on the authors toes, but it’s not the job searching that is broken - it’s the market that has shifted to favor companies and to put applicants at a disadvantage, something that hasn’t happened in the IT field for a long time. People reject candidates without a college degree because they can afford to - they still have plenty of applicants to pick from after filtering out the rest. There is no need for th…

There's that but there's also this: > However, after heading over to Y Combinator to check out startup jobs, I was again frustrated by the findings. YC Jobs has a category for Engineering, but it's all software. There's a category for Operations, but it's all CEO, CTO, management positions. After searching and searching I was unable to find any listings for any network or cybersecurity jobs along the sysadmin/enginee…

I think the key is being a generalist who can take on whatever systems the place uses. I think that no matter what, you still need someone who knows how all the pieces fit together and can troubleshoot it when it breaks. Obviously I'm a bit biased since that's how I see myself. I do actually still rack a server now and again and set up a switch or a firewall or whatever is needed that day, but it's not something that takes up much of my time. That stuff is pretty mature so it just doesn't need a lot of attention even for companies like mine who still have some on-prem gear as well as cloud.

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#69

Post by [deleted] »

ecshafer wrote: post #34
pflenker wrote: post #7

Not to step on the authors toes, but it’s not the job searching that is broken - it’s the market that has shifted to favor companies and to put applicants at a disadvantage, something that hasn’t happened in the IT field for a long time. People reject candidates without a college degree because they can afford to - they still have plenty of applicants to pick from after filtering out the rest. There is no need for th…

On /r/sysadmin and /r/itcareerquestions I have long been downvoted when I disagreed with the mantra of "just get a cert, college degrees are worthless". I do think that most valuable learning happens on the job and on your own. However, the job market is not always so hot for developers and IT, and like now it will have down turns. I always recommended younger people that even if they could get a job off of certs, th…

[deleted]

Re: A network engineer in search of greener pastures

#70

Post by unsupp0rted »

colonelspace wrote: post #48
unsupp0rted wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also the ones that ask for sexual preference (or however it is worded to get you to say straight/gay/other). The goal is to hire someone other than a pedestrian straight white male, of course. They can't outright say it.

It's shocking that it's even allowed to be asked.

In some jurisdictions it's not legal to ask, so they have to wait until the interview stage to suss out how non-heterosexual, non-white, and non-male you are.
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