Current Events > My boss is pushing to get me promoted to senior network engineer

(+) Yeah! (+)

Promotions are apparently on hold right now because they're working on changing our job titles from ____ Specialist to ____ Engineer, which may affect our pay scales. He said the process may not get started until next month, but... Even so... Wow.

Just over 9 years ago was my first day working graveyard shifts in a NOC by myself from 12AM to 12PM on Saturday and Sunday, and then I'd make up the rest of my 40 hours whenever during the week. I barely knew anything about networking back then, but part of the job was learning the ropes.

I've come so far, CE. I'm proud of myself.

NOC life is hard, kudos to you bro. I worked at a NOC for about 2 months until I found a better opportunity working Corporate IT

Congratulations, we know you've been very dedicated to this.

nice

Nu_Jersey_Devil posted...

NOC life is hard, kudos to you bro. I worked at a NOC for about 2 months until I found a better opportunity working Corporate IT

Yeah, corporate IT is where I'm at now. I never want to go back to managed services or telecom environments. I'm gonna try to stay at this company for the rest of my career.

Future congrats man. I got the senior promotion tacked onto my Data Center Engineer title back in Sept. Now he's given me new goals for this year including learning AWS networking so I can manage that for our division. It'll be a big undertaking since I have very limited experience with AWS at all.

BlazinBlue88 posted...

Future congrats man. I got the senior promotion tacked onto my Data Center Engineer title back in Sept. Now he's given me new goals for this year including learning AWS networking so I can manage that for our division. It'll be a big undertaking since I have very limited experience with AWS at all.

Nice. They're pushing us to learn automation, so I need to get on the ball with learning Python, Ansible, Jenkins, etc.

congrats.

hopefully your new salary is enough to afford current GPU prices lol

With all these IT people on GameFAQ's I think we should have our own IT profession board

CableZL posted...

I'm gonna try to stay at this company for the rest of my career.

Why is that if you don't mind me asking? How long have you been at this company? It's better in the IT field to job hop every couple years for better positions and pay. Easier to get a 20-30% pay bump job hopping than getting promoted within a company. Also getting the experience working in several different environments makes you a better tech.

BlazinBlue88 posted...

Why is that if you don't mind me asking? How long have you been at this company? It's better in the IT field to job hop every couple years for better positions and pay. Easier to get a 20-30% pay bump job hopping than getting promoted within a company. Also getting the experience working in several different environments makes you a better tech.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing since I got into IT, but... My experience working at most of the other companies I've worked for has been terrible AF for one reason or another. This company actually puts effort and dollars into following through on their company values.

My last job started out being a company I thought I wanted to retire from, but they made a really bad hire for global director of IT operations. The dude was full of shit. Then the company went public and started caring more about their shareholders than their employees.

SnipeStar posted...

congrats.

hopefully your new salary is enough to afford current GPU prices lol

I DO need to upgrade my PC at some point, lol. I built this thing back in early 2014 and it still runs like it's brand new. I doubt I could play most modern games on high settings, though.

CableZL posted...

I DO need to upgrade my PC at some point, lol. I built this thing back in early 2014 and it still runs like it's brand new. I doubt I could play most modern games on high settings, though.

yeah so do i, and im afraid at this point how much its going to cost.

CableZL posted...

Yeah, that's what I've been doing since I got into IT, but... My experience working at most of the other companies I've worked for has been terrible AF for one reason or another. This company actually puts effort and dollars into following through on their company values.

My last job started out being a company I thought I wanted to retire from, but they made a really bad hire for global director of IT operations. The dude was full of shit. Then the company went public and started caring more about their shareholders than their employees.

That's fair. I misread the first post thinking you've spent your entire career at this job. lol
Do you still chase Cisco certs like most networking guys or are you in a position tto where you've moved away from that?

CableZL posted...

Nice. They're pushing us to learn automation, so I need to get on the ball with learning Python, Ansible, Jenkins, etc.

Ugh same. I'm so behind on the whole automation trend. Python/Ansible is another goal my boss had for me this year. Now that it's an actual goal, I can finally push myself to learn it. I'm using ACloudGuru to study for my entry AWS cert and planned to dive into their Python courses right after.

Intentions are nice but they're just intentions until it happens. Corpate fuckery is not uncommon.

BlazinBlue88 posted...

That's fair. I misread the first post thinking you've spent your entire career at this job. lol
Do you still chase Cisco certs like most networking guys or are you in a position tto where you've moved away from that?

I'm going for CCNA Devnet now. I don't think this job puts much importance on certs, in that nothing will happen if I don't get it, but... It'll help me grow my automation skills.

I have to renew my CCNP in August, so I figure I might as well add a new track instead of retaking the same exam.

Nice, how much does it pay?

dj1200 posted...

Nice, how much does it pay?

I'm not sure yet. With the switch from * Specialist to * Engineer, they have mentioned that may be getting past increases by default. Then the promotion to senior network engineer would be another increase on top of that.

Nice! You can put your raise into ENZC!

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Nah man, the people I hated to deal with were:

1. People who just wanted to argue and didn't want to listen to any sort of instruction or suggestion
2. People who were FUCKING DUMB AF
3. People who were knowledgeable in IT, but didn't want to listen to anyone or anything about their problem and tried to use their knowledge as a reason to not have to listen

Example of #1:

A customer called in because they couldn't connect to the internet. I saw their modem online, so I started off by checking things on their computer. We went to the network adapters list and they didn't have any sort of network adapter.

Me: So it looks like that's going to be the problem. You might not have any drivers installed for your network adapter.
Her: BULL!
Me: ... .... Uhh... No, you need to have drivers installed for this to work.

I had her go to the device manager and look. Sure enough, it said her network adapter drivers weren't installed.

Her: I don't think that's the problem
Me: You need those drivers installed before your computer will work with any internet connection

She didn't listen and ended up hanging up because she didn't believe me.

Example of #2:

Frontier had just bought lines from Verizon in 13 states, including West Virginia. This guy called in because he couldn't remember his password. We have to ask the security question listed in order to verify they had permission to get the account password.

Me: OK, sir. The security question I see listed here is: "What is your favorite book?"
Him: HELL IF I KNOW! I DON'T READ BOOKS!
Me: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... *Puts the call on mute* What the fuck, man ... .... ...

I must have had him on mute for like 5 minutes. That was literally the dumbest possible answer to the question. He could have just said something like "I don't know," and I think my brain would have just processed it better. I was mentally stuck. I had to transfer him to customer service so he could verify his account further.

Another example of #2:

This older guy couldn't get on the internet, but he was having trouble hearing me through the whole call and he was complaining about that.

Me: Thanks for calling Frontier's tech support. How can I help you?
Him: You're gonna have to speak up! I can't hear you very well at all! You sound like a quiet little mouse!
Me: (Louder) How can I help you?
Him: I still can't hear you very well!
Me: (Louder) How can I help you?
Him: You're still really quiet, damn it! Oh well, I guess we'll just try to deal with this bullshit service you guys sell. My internet isn't working.
Me: OK, which lights are lit up on your modem?
Him: Damn it! I still can't hear you!
Me: WHICH. LIGHTS. ARE. LIT UP. ON. YOUR. MODEM!?
Him: Damn it! This damn phone! (To his wife) HONEY!? CAN YOU BRING ME ANOTHER PHONE!? THIS PHONE SUCKS!

His wife walked in the room about a minute later

Her: WHAAAT?
Him: Can you bring me another phone? I can't hear anything on this damn thing!
Her: WELL YOU'RE HOLDING IT UPSIDE DOWN! OF COURSE YOU CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING!
Me: *Mute* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Him: ... ... ... ... ... ... .... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... (meekly) I was holding the phone upside down
Me: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ahem... *unmute* Oh, OK.

Example of #3:

This guy couldn't send email and was blaming it on Frontier's email servers.

Me: *Sets up Outlook and tests Frontier's email servers with my tech account* It looks like the servers are working OK. I can send and receive email just fine, so we'll probably need to troubleshoot on your end to see what's going on.
Him: This isn't on my end. This is gonna be something wrong with your servers.
Me: Well, at this time, I can send and receive emails just fine using our servers. Also, if our email servers were having some widespread problem, we would have a ton of people calling in and we don't.
Him: Well I'm an MCSE, so I would know more than you. We need to escalate this.

This argument went back and forth for about 45 minutes. He finally agreed to let me remotely connect to his computer to troubleshoot it myself.

Me: (Opens command prompt) OK, so you can't telnet into the server on the SMTP port, so it's probably a firewall issue. You don't have any firewall software installed on your computer, so let's look at the firewall in the modem. (Opened a web browser and logged into the modem) OK, yeah, the firewall on your modem is set to high instead of the normal low setting.

Him: HOW'D THAT GET CHANGED!?!?!?!?!?!?

I didn't even answer that question because we both know who the fuck changed it. I just set it back to low and his email started working.

Him: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOUR SERVICE DOESN'T WORK WITH THE FIREWALL ON HIGH!!!
Me: Well, it's not that it doesn't work. It's doing what it's supposed to do. A firewall's job by default is to block ports. With the high setting, it blocks more ports than on the low setting. If you want to have the firewall on high and you want to be able to send email, you have to do port forwarding to tell the firewall to allow that port. I can show you where to go to do tha-
Him: Noooo, no, no... That's OK. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... (meekly) I'm the one who changed it
Me: *Mute* Yeah, I know, mother fucker *Unmute* No worries. I'm just glad we figured it out.

There were a lot of callers who just didn't understand the stuff, needed help, and generally followed directions pretty well. Those people were great to deal with for the most part. Even if they were understandably frustrated with stuff not working. The assholes and idiots were too frequent, though, and it ruined the entire experience of doing tech support.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Oh hell yeah! Congrats! I'm proud of you, too. Keep pushing and getting better!

It blows my mind just how far I've made it. I dropped out of college after my first year and I thought I was gonna be stuck in menial jobs forever. I had no appetite for going back to college at all.

Nu_Jersey_Devil posted...

With all these IT people on GameFAQ's I think we should have our own IT profession board

Good idea.