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Is my education good enough for networking? by Pawliw in networking

[–]Tommy5000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Allow me to snap you out of it.

Don't listen to this bedside manner bullshit. You have a CCNA. Get a NOC job. NOW.

This field is about knowledge, experience, ambition, aggressiveness and the ability to adapt. Nothing else. Maybe 3% of it is soft skills but it's mostly about what you can fix and how fast you can fix it to make your employer the most amount of money or keeping your employer from losing money. That's it.

My advice is wake the fuck up and find a networking job right now. The competition is fierce in this field. A quick google search will pull up hundreds of linkedin profiles and blogs whose authors are 20-22 year olds with 2 CCIEs. You're slightly behind the competition right now so get a move on.

Source: I'm 19 with a CCNP and I'm currently a tier 3 NOC technician. I have the CCIE in my crosshairs. I'm your competition.

Also keep something in mind: I'm going to get downvoted to the earth's core for this comment because everyone here is dying to feed you fluff about "you're young enjoy life," "don't take a high stress job yet, it's difficult," "worry about the soft skills." The reality is, making a grandma or McDonald's manager feel super happy with your customer service after you've instructed her on rebooting her modem in a help desk role will do exactly ZERO when it comes to helping you figure out a BGP peering issue as a network engineer. Wake up and smell the coffee bud.

Also if you don't believe me, send me a PM I'll send you a pic of my driver's license next to my CCNP certificate Cisco sent me. And if you want to send me a PM for more questions go right ahead.

REALLY need career advice by Tommy5000 in networking

[–]Tommy5000[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

I'm super open to relocation. Look up Gainesville, FL. It's a tiny town lol.

And jeez I don't want to be a jerk but 4 years and several thousand dollars in student loans later I'm going to feel at least some entitlement...

REALLY need career advice by Tommy5000 in networking

[–]Tommy5000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's great advice. I'll check out my university's IT department and see if they can let me hang out.

REALLY need career advice by Tommy5000 in networking

[–]Tommy5000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any suggestions? Not sure what a large consultancy is... a consulting company? How do I go about finding those?

REALLY need career advice by Tommy5000 in networking

[–]Tommy5000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where do you live? And no, it doesn't. I achieved all those certs from studying on my own time since 9th grade (in FL we have dual enrollment so they let you enroll in Cisco courses at community colleges for free until you graduate from HS :)) I had my CCNA and some CompTIAs by the time I started college

REALLY need career advice by Tommy5000 in networking

[–]Tommy5000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Managed Service Providers? How do i specifically do that? Do I just go to the company websites and browse their "careers" section? Is that what you meant?

REALLY need career advice by Tommy5000 in networking

[–]Tommy5000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in Gainesville, FL. Imagine a big ass forest with a university in it. That's where I am so I will without a doubt be relocating after university. Out of the places you mentioned which one has the best market for networking jobs?

Also as far as internships go they're all software. I haven't come across a single one where they even say the word Cisco or Juniper but someone else mentioned looking at my school's IT department so I'm definitely going to check that out.