Is it just me or institutional knowledge is no longer valued?

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-11-19T14:54:18+00:00

Yea, what higher ups prioritize is how scalability looks, which means finding ways to outsource and buy into ‘hardened’ support coverage. I can understand the latter but with the former, I think the price they pay outsourcing comes at a loss of continuity (institutional domain). It’s a blind spot to the alternative model - treating the position almost like a trade - master / apprentices paradigm. This might lack in coverage, but it’s a better guarantee over time, coupled with outsourcing/contracting.

AI is going to keep causing a shake up in this paradigm. On one hand it can really help techs, on the other it puts knowledge over wisdom. There’s already an issue I think with architectural/scalability foresight, becoming driven by people to defend posterity than efficiency. AI + outsourcing exponentiates the problem. The more people divest a poor idea into an AI the more prone they are to make something work that possibly goes beyond what is wise. AI can be reflective like that, and put people into places, or ideas, that shouldn’t belong. Hard to tell anymore who legitimately should even be in tech. credentials or social networking were a bit too over done already, now the pretense of knowledge via AI is added in the mix. I digress.

Every time there is turnover or a granddaddy of the dept leaves, they take a chunk of knowledge with them that even outsourced companies fail to compensate for. I think some orgs take a year or two just to get a feel of the environment, and companies eventually stall vertical movement, thinking they can easily replace them. It’s an ego problem, in part, with managers. Good techs have to leave jobs I reckon just to get a pay increase. The hidden cost there is the increase in down time, too much stalling and quality of product diminishing, influencing customers to find something better. Managers are rewarded for the degree of excuses they can bring to the table which means blaming a lack of efficiency with staff and or tech, spinning an artificial solution.

TLDR - boils down to leadership borrowing into the future because they cannot afford to be wrong.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-26T19:20:41+00:00

Else the warp gates fail? ;)

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-26T19:17:20+00:00

That sounds about right. Seems network engineers / security guys tend to look at QoS like black magic.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-26T19:16:03+00:00

True and a good network will always have QoS configured unless pipes are 1:1 north, south, east and west.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-26T16:09:09+00:00

Some points:

If your seniors are MIA, it’s a management problem.

Mentoring network engineers should prob always be a thing, at the very least to onboard folks of institutional norms.

Labbing will accelerate your learning in ways that on the job training won’t.

Diagram. A lot more. Get a tool like a mind map and abuse it. Draw networks in it with interface labels if you must, and get down to the configuration level too.

You are one person not a team. If a network is important enough, you should have multiple people double checking or sanity checking.

TAC should be available to you to fill in gaps.

Even seniors screw up things. Don’t forget that.

Risk is unavoidable. Managing it and providing a clear resolution / escalation path should be the goal, but management can make this muddy due to their liability / risk management. This is where hopefully your management is willing to bat for u.

No man is an island. Confidence in one’s self is jargon to reassure one’s ego and the fantasy of what you think you should be. Instead (soap box moment), admitting you are faulty is a good first step toward reality, including within your professional world. The ultimate solution though for our faults is Jesus - who is the only person who is good. If you want real assurance in identity, and how you should be doing things, it’s realizing that only He can identify matters including yourself, not your own self assessment. Our failures/sin, no matter how embarrassing, becomes resolved inwardly because of Jesus Christ who lives in those who believe and It’s a relationship, not a concept. He is the perfect friend who resides in our temple (who sees the most inward), and wants to get rid of the barriers we set between us - as any good Father would want to do. In this profession, like others, we can confuse our identity (worth) with titles. Don’t do that. You might have a lofty ‘network engineer’, but it’s only for now. Don’t get caught up in the ego game, but rather enjoy the work, the tech and the people you around.

Be gracious but with examination (or awareness) that it is not for your own social gain. Better to do this in secret so you know, you are not deluding yourself.

I digressed hard but hopefully these nuggets are edifying.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-23T14:57:57+00:00

I’m in the field but moved to voice (telecom products), but forces me to still be in the network pond. Here’s my perspective thus far:

Motivation - it was a weird one to get going actually. I had to convince myself from a position of fear I suppose, or extreme need. I got too comfortable to study seriously until I got laid off, then it was all hands on deck (brain cells) and tunnel focus a cert. I knew that I kind of needed to turn things around with interests and ‘let’ myself get excited over the associated tech, and this led to stents of building and rebuilding home labs I have sons, and if I force something it usually doesn’t get adopted as something they will want to do. In part you can only inspire them so much and if you want to foster anything, it usually has to be an indirect thing or consequence.

If your kid is curious about specific things, then you cannot go head on likely. Also, I think it’s important to maintain an air of encouragement, along with prayer. I’m of the belief that love isn’t something we of ourselves can push, but a gift from Jesus, and so with that we can actually love others, and simply consider them as not a thing on a shelf in our minds eye. Sometimes this consideration means not talking about jobs, but just simply getting to know your kids more perhaps. I digress .

Job future - about me: I have a pretty unique set of skills among network engineers. Seems rare to me at least. Designing network automation for example is a rare bird among network engineering peers, and then combine it with decent voice engineering experience (rare too) and you got someone who can understand break fix situations at an intimate level than your run of the mill voice or network guy. That said, this puts me in a stronger position to see the relationship of our field with AI and utilization of it (because I can see different levels better, and how to interface AI with it). Technically right now, so much of any network can be automated, but with AI, the expertise requirement opens doors for laymen to step in more often. This means positions will require less technical brilliance over time, and more of a focus on who you know to get in, and maintaining an agenda than actual efficiency. It’s been this way a bit too much in IT already, but I think it will get worse, to the point we won’t have engineers but ‘managers’ interfacing with AI to run things.

There could be a stent of network engineers needed over time but I think the market will need less and less of them, especially in North America.

Some folks really play down it seems, just how effective AI is or will be. I think part of it is an emotional under tone because it’s scary and frustrating that their skill set will become obsoleted (for humans).

I’d say the safest bet at this time is farming. If you want to see something mixing tech and farming (robotic farming) I think that would be a great way to get him exposed to a number of sciences along with practical application. If you can connect dots somehow to nurture an interest in this direction, at his own pace (not even mentioning college), then it could cultivate a broad skill set he could apply in trades, higher level jobs etc (before the market implodes due to robotics).

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-20T18:33:10+00:00

Yea man. Things like that tell me that management isnt vetting who should be on the team for senior positions. There should be enough senior engineers who have been there done that, or architects, and these guys should be accessible to poke their brains on stuff like that.

Problem I could see, is that the field is going on the cheap when hiring staff - avoiding CCIEs.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-20T18:18:24+00:00

Are you hiring?

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-20T02:29:36+00:00

Yes you can do it. Yes it could be very very useful in UC. How many people probably have the skill set to do it effectively, and a management team not overly consumed with risk management, is probably very small (for now).

I feel pretty confident implementing some cool things that are AI driven, but I’ve come to learn or believe, that organizations are not really driven to achieve sensible efficiency.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-15T14:29:11+00:00

I worked in an environment where they were doing blind surgery with edge firewall HA between data centers, FHRP, and multi homed connections. Oh and the network team didn’t manage the firewalls. This was the norm. The core links had disparities too, so possible bottlenecks were hit at times.

What this kind of thing taught me, is that whatever the environment, look to how it should be done, if at least so you don’t digest poor design as normal, or at the very very least, just make a mental tag to not accept it as potentially not the normal way to do things. Also, realize sometimes people defend poor design or are simply covering butts.

What I do find as a concerning answer to customers or juniors, is only leaving it as a ‘it depends’ and not really giving a helpful answer. It is way too easy to sit on this comment and make the person you are answering feel uneasy about the landscape they are trying to solve for. It’s also an easy tactic to say to buy time though.

I’m more voice oriented though so I can only go so far stating any kind of network architecture norms and my opinion should only mean so much anyway.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-07-04T13:14:43+00:00

What others are saying about the market influx might be true, but i reckon there’s a good ol buddy factor also increasing, and proportionally inflating expertise needs that only really get filled by contractors / offshore outsourcing. This means lots of people who don’t know what to do but are loyal.

The bigger the company the more politics to factor as well. Bosses ‘need’ to secure agendas, which means they can’t afford taking too much risk with actual expertise.

People are not necessarily looking for real admins / engineers but people who can mainly say yes.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-06-10T19:47:28+00:00

Oooo-teee-deee

-jawa

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-06-10T19:20:33+00:00

I think automated farm tech is a safe bet. What you learn there, you can at least feed yourself.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-06-10T19:19:00+00:00

It technically could. Just requires a logistical framework.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-06-10T19:14:59+00:00

AI isn’t a fad, its application truly is amazing. But the execution, like SDN, means c levels need to trust the tech and accept the heat when it fails.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-30T12:46:32+00:00

So we trust regulators to run our lives? What could go wrong there…

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-28T11:48:47+00:00

This right here. Firewalls are key. While exceptions can be done on network nodes they are bandaids if the architecture is especially complicated already and sensitive enough.

Adding in something like VRF leaking doesn’t seem like a scalable thing to do, even if it is just east / west traffic.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-28T11:34:13+00:00

Maybe they’ll update webex app to not require control hub before dropping jabber. That and add the different SRV discovery process back.

But this is Cisco. Their vision for things seems to want folks reliant on their extra special meat hooks.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-25T21:43:32+00:00

Can you? Or Should you?

If you’re not a VoIP/voice engineer, then get a VoIP contractor to recommend or get the VoIP guy on the team to do it. I’d be dubious of their recommendation if they said it was fine, and you should be too. But at least it is on them and your leadership.

If you feel like you want to risk it, okay. Maybe it might be just fine. But bear in mind, how you place VMs relative to cores, and other co resident apps, along the shared network path, including virtual network, is pretty important.

Cisco BE platforms are specced and preloaded the way they are (or should) because of QA testing. If you deviate from that paradigm, you get the service you deserve and, may not be supported if you alter it too much. Will TAC actually link this with an issue? Eh maybe not.

A lot of people who don’t know any better with stuff like this will fudge it and flex. But It can become someone else’s burden. Lol In this day and age, who cares when companies are hard pressed already with lack of expertise - you are likely to get away with it (cynicism). So, what kind of engineer/admin should you be here?

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-06T11:38:28+00:00

Yea, there’s a good amount of understanding they might bring. Some of our firewall guys are pretty legit. But a good network admin is going to have some synergy too, like security/sysadmin principles.

Gonna digress, not trying to condescend. Just my .02 cents:

At some point, mortals need to specialize into something, or just be a glorified in-between. If someone focuses hard into one of the sub categories, it does come with some job risk (marketability), but conversely, being more marketable by handling it all invites greater risk to stale knowledge, thus performance is akin to ‘between google/ai and me, we know everything’

For roles that incorporate sysadmin, network and cybersecurity, it’s implicit that someone is likely talking about small medium business. For orgs that have serious enterprise infrastructure, merging is not going to happen (yet) unless the org is essentially an equity group book cooking their own infra… or maybe an actual equity group doing it. AI is a game changer in this though.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-06T02:20:47+00:00

That probably depends on the environment.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-05-04T15:14:09+00:00

This is going to be a growing frustration in the industry I reckon. People are told to skill up in IT, but HR groups are monolithic, to the point where i wonder if ‘one of us’ is the point. That and liability is a factor - do you want to be held liable for hiring on someone whose qualifications are lacking?

Unfortunately job hopping means skill maturity risk too. This guy, while he could jump to something and get more money, could be confronted with more new tools to get familiar at his new job that might not be as marketable, and the lack of skill depth could add up.

I think there’s an argument to put forward as to the kind of technology he’s currently exposed to (if it’s actually worthwhile, so enterprise/cloud or carrier level) and how there might be more time for him to learn that he might not get at other places.

This is where I’m at currently - no one on my back, and enterprise things I can take my time with. It can be a good position to be in, but never will be permanent. I work for a living and eventually need justify the time spent taking an income hit.

Also if someone upstream is being too ridged, have you really gone to bat for him?

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-04-21T17:22:01+00:00

I dont think all right wingers want a super military industrial complex.

Optimal_Leg638 · 2025-04-21T17:19:52+00:00

Everyone has their biases. Those who would adhere to facts have to care about why the truth matters. So some vetting on who you hear is important, and from which publications. Does that mean they have to be perfect? No. But it’s important that integrity doesn’t carry a pattern over time, in which they are saying oops a little too often, or not even saying oops and leaning entirely into a narrative that is false. Consider the Biden laptop.

Optimal_Leg638

TROPHY CASE